Group coordination support for synchronous Internet collaboration

Abstract

Current research on networked multimedia applications such as distributed interactive simulations concentrates on transport issues like multicast routing and presentation and session management, including session orchestration and quality-of-service support in media delivery. Session orchestration includes mechanisms to coordinate fair and exclusive access to shared resources whose semantics do not allow for concurrent usage, in order to prevent conflicts and inconsistencies in the shared workspace. The authors discuss the current state of research with regard to such services, which they refer to as group coordination, and present a new approach that integrates group coordination with extended multicast services.