We address the problem of integrating user preferences with network quality of service parameters for the streaming of media content, and suggest protocol stack configurations that satisfy user and technical requirements to the best available degree. Our approach is able to handle inconsistencies between user and networking considerations, formulating the problem of construction of tailor-made protocols as a prioritization problem, solvable using fuzzy programming.

This paper proposes an approach that integrates technical concerns with user perceptual considerations for intelligent decision making in the construction of tailor-made multimedia communication protocols. Thus, the proposed approach, based on multicriteria decision making (MDM), incorporates not only classical networking considerations, but, indeed, user preferences as well. Furthermore, in keeping with the task-dependent nature consistently identified in multimedia scenarios, the suggested communication protocols also take into account the type of multimedia application that they are transporting. Lastly, this approach also opens the possibility for such protocols to dynamically adapt based on a changing operating environment and user's preferences.

The concept of quality of service (QoS) in distributed multimedia systems is indelibly associated with the provision of an acceptable level of application performance. In turn this performance is itself dependent on both the perceived, subjective quality of the application as well as its robustness to network congestion. We suggest a framework for QoS management that incorporates not only classical QoS considerations, but, user preferences as well. Our approach constructs an appropriately tailored communication protocol using objective-technical judgements provided by the designer and subjective-perceptual judgements supplied by the user for intelligent decision making. Due to the nature of our problem, where these two information facets may be inconsistent, the need to apply a weight determination technique suitable to handle inconsistencies was indispensable. To this end, a fuzzy logic-based description of the problem has been developed and fuzzy programming was used to obtain a user-oriented ordering of QoS parameters.