The evolution of the World Wide Web service has incorporated new distributed multimedia
conference applications, powering a new generation of e-learning development and allowing
improved interactivity and prohuman relations. Groupware applications are increasingly
representative in the Internet home applications market, however, the Quality of Service (QoS)
provided by the network is still a limitation impairing their performance. Such applications
have found, in multicast technology, an ally contributing for their efficient implementation and
scalability. Additionally, considering QoS as a design goal at the application level becomes
crucial for groupware development, enabling QoS productivity to applications. The applications’
ability to adapt themselves dynamically according to the resources availability can be
considered a quality factor.Tolerant real-time applications, such as video conferences, are in
the frontline to benefit from QoS adaptation. However, not all include adaptive technology able
to provide both end-system and network quality awareness. Adaptation, in these cases, can be
achieved by introducing a multiplatform middleware layer responsible for tutoring the applications’
resources (enabling adjudication or limitation) based on the available processing and
networking capabilities. Congregating these technological contributions, an adaptive platform
has been developed integrating public domain multicast tools, applied to a Web-based distance
learning system. The system is user-centered (e-student), aiming at good pedagogical practices
and proactive usability for multimedia and network resources. The services provided, including
QoS adapted interactive multimedia multicast conferences (MMC), are fully integrated and
transparent to end-users. QoS adaptation, when treated systematically in tolerant real-time
applications, denotes advantages in group scalability and
