Multimedia communication involving digital audio and/or digital video has rather strict delay requirements. A real-time channel is defined in this paper as a simplex connection between a source and a destination characterized by parameters representing the performance requirements of the client. A real-time service is capable of creating realtime channels on demand and guaranteeing their performance. These guarantees often take the form of lower bounds on the bandwidth allocated to a channel and upper bounds on the delays to be experienced by a packet on the channel. In this paper

Most of the solutions proposed to support real-time (i.e. guaranteed performance) communication services in packetswitching networks adopt a connection-oriented and reservation-oriented approach. In such an approach, resource allocation and route selection decisions are made before the start of the communication on the basis of resource availability and realtime network load at that time, and are usually kept for the duration of the communication. This rather static resource management approach has certain limitations: it does not take into account (a) the dynamics of the communicating clients; (b) the dynamics of the network state; and (c) the tradeoff between quality of service and network availability, thus affecting the availability and flexibility of the real-time network services. Availability is the ability of the network to accommodate as many real-time clients as possible, while flexibility is the ability to adapt the real-time services to changing network state and client dem...

This proposal outlines a plan for the design, deployment and operation of a high speed campus network at Washington University based on fast packet switching technology that has been developed here during the last several years. This new network will support ubiquitous multimedia workstations with high-resolution graphics and video capabilities, opening up a wide range of new applications in research and education. It will support aggregate throughputs of hundreds of gigabits per second and will be designed to support port interfaces at up to 2.4 Gb/s. Initial implementations will emphasize 155 Mb/s port rates, with higher rates introduced as the demand arises and as economics permits. We propose to move this technology quickly into an operational setting where the objectives of network use and network research can be pursued concurrently. Contents 1 Motivation and Objectives 4 2 Applications 5 3 Networking Questions 7 4 Creating the Network Components 8 4.1 ATM Network Technology ...

This paper presents a tutorial on transport layer concepts and terminology, and a survey of transport layer services and protocols. The transport layer protocol TCP is used as a reference point, and compared and contrasted with nineteen other protocols designed over the past two decades. The service and protocol features of twelve of the most important protocols are summarized in both text and tables

One of the most promising approaches for high speed networks for integrated service applications is fast packet switching, or ATM (Asynchronous Transfer Mode). ATM can be characterized by very high speed transmission links and simple, hardwired protocols within a network. To match the transmission speed of the network links, and to minimize the overhead due to the processing of network protocols, the switching of cells is done in hardware switching fabrics in ATM networks. A number of designs have been proposed for implementing ATM switches. While many differences exist among the proposals, the vast majority of them is based on self-routing multi-stage interconnection networks. This is because of the desirable features of multi-stage interconnection networks such as self--routing capability and suitability for VLSI implementation. Existing ATM switch architectures can be classified into two major classes: blocking switches, where blockings of cells may occur within a switch when more t...

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The GigaBit Network Switch Controller (GBNSC) is a process which controls the Washington University Gigabit Switch (WUGS) using in-band ATM control cells. The GBNSC is being developed by the Applied Research Laboratory (ARL) of Washington University in St. Louis. This document describes the design and implementation of the GBNSC and is intended for use by those interested in the functionality of the switch controller as well as developers who may be called on to update or maintain it. Version Notes: Version 1.0: All Ken Cox Version 1.1: John’s additions. More NCMO details.

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B-ISDN networks of the future will have to handle traffic with a wide range of traffic characteristics and performance requirements. In view of the high bandwidth of these networks and the relatively large propagation delays involved in wide-area B-ISDN networks, the performance requirements can only be provided by reserving resources to communicating clients at the connection establishment time. However, allocation mechanisms for heterogenous bursty traffic usually result in a rather poor utilization of network resources. In this paper, we propose a simple admission control criterion that can be used to reserve resources for bursty as well as smooth traffic with delay and loss sensitivities. Our scheme leads to a reasonable utilization of the network bandwidth (about 40%) for delay sensitive traffic with moderate burstiness (peak-to-average bandwidth ratios about 4), even under the worst possible conditions. Actual utilizations can be higher if there is smooth traffic or traffic which...

Abstract The DARPA Internet is the most successful experiment in heterogeneous internetworking. It connects computer systems from almost every major vendor, using a wide variety of wide-area and local-area network technology, and is in continual use by thousands of people. This annotated bibliography covers the literature of the Internet as an experiment: publications which convey the experience acquired by the experimenters.