Framework for implementing the next generation of communication protocols

Abstract

Future distributed multimedia applications will require an architecture capable of managing Quality of Service end to end. This is not achievable using current, general purpose protocol stacks. We present a framework that will permit QoS management at all layers. It will support QoS negotiation, flexible configuration of protocols to match application requirements with network and system resources, QoS monitoring, renegotiation and reconfiguration. This paper focusses particularly on the protocol profiling and configuration aspects of the framework. Adaptive profiling requires understanding of transport protocol mechanism dependencies. This is illustrated by an example configuration suitable to continuous media applications.