Providing support for data transfer in a new networking environment

Abstract

Future networking environments will have different characteristics from actual ones. The network service is expected to provide more bandwidth and be more reliable, and applications data will be generated from different type of sources making different requirements from data transfer protocols. Rather than trying to adapt an existing transport protocol to this new environment, we decided to develop a new one called RAPID. Two important features of RAPID are its unidirectional data transfer capability and its flexibility to adapt to different Quality of Service requirements. To provide an unidirectional data transfer service RAPID makes use of forward error correction codes to enhance the network's reliability degree. This work presents a description of this new environment and the protocol architecture, it also contains an analysis about the use of forward error correction codes and some issues concerning implementation aspects.