Dynamically configurable protocol stacks

This paper presents a generic architecture for multimedia terminals with respect to the management and implementation of dynamic and programmable protocol stacks. This architecture is built around the combination of CORBA based management components and real-time multimedia data processing engines. The management objects export a set of easily usable interfaces, which allow cascading and configuring the engines in such a way that they terminate multimedia network connections with the desired protocol stack. Terminal software components, which are designed according to existing multimedia delivery standards (such as TINA or H.323) can be easily integrated with these CORBA components in order to introduce dynamic programmable multimedia endpoints in the terminal(s).