Distributed advance reservation of real-time connections

Abstract.

The ability to reserve real-time connections in advance is essential in all distributed multiparty applications (i.e., applications involving multiple human beings) using a network that controls admissions to provide good quality of service. This paper discusses the requirements of the clients of an advance reservation service, and a distributed design for such a service. The design is described within the context of the Tenet Real-Time Protocol Suite 2, a suite being developed for multiparty communication, which will offer advance reservation capabilities to its clients, based on the principles and the mechanisms proposed in the paper. Simulation results providing useful data about the performance and some of the properties of these mechanisms are also presented. We conclude that the one described here is a viable approach to constructing an advance reservation service within the context of the Tenet Suites as well as that of other solutions to the multiparty real-time communication problem.