IP and ATM - a position paper

This paper gives a technical overview of different networking technologies, such as the Internet, ATM. It describes different approaches of how to run IP on top of an ATM network, and assesses their potential to be used as an integrated services network

IP and ATM - current evolution for integrated services

Current and future applications make use of different technologies as voice, data, and video. Consequently network technologies need to support them. For many years, the ATM based Broadband-ISDN has generally been regarded as the ultimate networking technology, which can integrate voice, data, and video services. With the recent tremendous growth of the Internet and the reluctant deployment of public ATM networks, the future development of ATM seems to be less clear than it used to be. In the past IP provided (and was though to provide) only best effort services, thus, despite its world wide diffution, was not considered as a network solution for multimedia application. Currently many of the IETF working groups work on areas related to integrated services, and IP is also proposing itself as networking technology for supporting voice, data, and video services. This paper give a technical overview on the competing integrated services network solutions, such as IP, ATM and the different available and emerging technologies on how to run IP over ATM, and tries to identify their potential and shortcomings

A Framework for Quality-Driven Delivery in Distributed Multimedia Systems

In this paper, we propose a framework for Quality-Driven Delivery (QDD) in distributed multimedia environments. Quality-driven delivery refers to the capacity of a system to deliver documents, or more generally objects, while considering the users expectations in terms of non-functional requirements. For this QDD framework, we propose a model-driven approach where we focus on QoS information modeling and transformation. QoS information models and meta-models are used during different QoS activities for mapping requirements to system constraints, for exchanging QoS information, for checking compatibility between QoS information and more generally for making QoS decisions. We also investigate which model transformation operators have to be implemented in order to support some QoS activities such as QoS mapping

IP and ATM integration: A New paradigm in multi-service internetworking

ATM is a widespread technology adopted by many to support advanced data communication, in particular efficient Internet services provision. The expected challenges of multimedia communication together with the increasing massive utilization of IP-based applications urgently require redesign of networking solutions in terms of both new functionalities and enhanced performance. However, the networking context is affected by so many changes, and to some extent chaotic growth, that any approach based on a structured and complex top-down architecture is unlikely to be applicable. Instead, an approach based on finding out the best match between realistic service requirements and the pragmatic, intelligent use of technical opportunities made available by the product market seems more appropriate. By following this approach, innovations and improvements can be introduced at different times, not necessarily complying with each other according to a coherent overall design. With the aim of pursuing feasible innovations in the different networking aspects, we look at both IP and ATM internetworking in order to investigating a few of the most crucial topics/ issues related to the IP and ATM integration perspective. This research would also address various means of internetworking the Internet Protocol (IP) and Asynchronous Transfer Mode (ATM) with an objective of identifying the best possible means of delivering Quality of Service (QoS) requirements for multi-service applications, exploiting the meritorious features that IP and ATM have to offer. Although IP and ATM often have been viewed as competitors, their complementary strengths and limitations from a natural alliance that combines the best aspects of both the technologies. For instance, one limitation of ATM networks has been the relatively large gap between the speed of the network paths and the control operations needed to configure those data paths to meet changing user needs. IP\u27s greatest strength, on the other hand, is the inherent flexibility and its capacity to adapt rapidly to changing conditions. These complementary strengths and limitations make it natural to combine IP with ATM to obtain the best that each has to offer. Over time many models and architectures have evolved for IP/ATM internetworking and they have impacted the fundamental thinking in internetworking IP and ATM. These technologies, architectures, models and implementations will be reviewed in greater detail in addressing possible issues in integrating these architectures s in a multi-service, enterprise network. The objective being to make recommendations as to the best means of interworking the two in exploiting the salient features of one another to provide a faster, reliable, scalable, robust, QoS aware network in the most economical manner. How IP will be carried over ATM when a commercial worldwide ATM network is deployed is not addressed and the details of such a network still remain in a state of flux to specify anything concrete. Our research findings culminated with a strong recommendation that the best model to adopt, in light of the impending integrated service requirements of future multi-service environments, is an ATM core with IP at the edges to realize the best of both technologies in delivering QoS guarantees in a seamless manner to any node in the enterprise

Transport of video over partial order connections

A Partial Order and partial reliable Connection (POC) is an end-to-end transport connection authorized to deliver objects in an order that can differ from the transmitted one. Such a connection is also authorized to lose some objects. The POC concept is motivated by the fact that heterogeneous best-effort networks such as Internet are plagued by unordered delivery of packets and losses, which tax the performances of current applications and protocols. It has been shown, in several research works, that out of order delivery is able to alleviate (with respect to CO service) the use of end systems’ communication resources. In this paper, the efficiency of out-of-sequence delivery on MPEG video streams processing is studied. Firstly, the transport constraints (in terms of order and reliability) that can be relaxed by MPEG video decoders, for improving video transport, are detailed. Then, we analyze the performance gain induced by this approach in terms of blocking times and recovered errors. We demonstrate that POC connections fill not only the conceptual gap between TCP and UDP but also provide real performance improvements for the transport of multimedia streams such MPEG video

Ethernet - a survey on its fields of application

During the last decades, Ethernet progressively became the most widely used local area networking (LAN) technology. Apart from LAN installations, Ethernet became also attractive for many other fields of application, ranging from industry to avionics, telecommunication, and multimedia. The expanded application of this technology is mainly due to its significant assets like reduced cost, backward-compatibility, flexibility, and expandability. However, this new trend raises some problems concerning the services of the protocol and the requirements for each application. Therefore, specific adaptations prove essential to integrate this communication technology in each field of application. Our primary objective is to show how Ethernet has been enhanced to comply with the specific requirements of several application fields, particularly in transport, embedded and multimedia contexts. The paper first describes the common Ethernet LAN technology and highlights its main features. It reviews the most important specific Ethernet versions with respect to each application field’s requirements. Finally, we compare these different fields of application and we particularly focus on the fundamental concepts and the quality of service capabilities of each proposal

Network emulation focusing on QoS-Oriented satellite communication

This chapter proposes network emulation basics and a complete case study of QoS-oriented Satellite Communication

Sustaining a Vertically Disintegrated Network through a Bearer Service Market

Based upon the Internet perspective, this chapter will attempt to clarify and revise several ideas about the separation between infrastructure facilities and service offerings in digital communications networks. The key notions that we will focus on in this paper are: i) the bearer service as a technology-independent interface which exports blind network functionality to applications development; ii) the sustainability of an independent market for bearer service and the organizational consequences associated with such a market