In this paper, we propose a new bandwidth allocation technique where a new stream can preempt an appropriate amount of bandwidth from other existing streams, considering both quality and priority requirements of users. The existing preemption-based technique has focused on the preemption among the streams with the same user. However, in multi-party multimedia applications, there would be a case where we would like to raise the quality of a specific stream (e.g. in a video conference, the video stream of a new chair may become more important than those of the existing participants). Therefore the preemption should be allowed among streams with different users and the best preemption in terms of their requirements should be provided. In our technique, using the algorithm for solving the minimum flow cost problem, the preemption is calculated so that the total loss of quality and priority of the existing streams can be minimized. We have implemented the proposed technique and evaluated it through the experiment using MPEG1 video streams, and have confirmed that our technique can keep a high frame rate for each existing MPEG1 video stream even when accommodating a lot of new streams.
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