Filter Propagation in Dissemination Trees:

We describe the concept of the relocatable continuous media filter. The novelty of these filters is how they can propagate over a dissemination tree in a network. We describe the filter propagation protocol to achieve this. Execution of filters inside a network allows the network to be viewed in a novel way, as a "processor" with its "instruction set" being the various types of available filters. Since filters generally modify the data rate of the continuous media stream, usually (but not necessarily) reducing it, filters allow the trading off of bandwidth and processing in a network