Guaranteeing Performance For Real Time Communication In Wide Area Networks

The increasing importance of distributed multimedia applications and the emergence of user interfaces based on digital audio and digital video will soon require that computer communications networks offer real-time services. This paper argues that the feasibility of providing performance guarantees in a wide-area network should be investigated, and describes a possible approach. We present a model of the network to be studied, and discuss its generality, as well as the presumable limits to its validity in the future. We also give a careful formulation of the problem, including a precise definition of the guarantees to be provided and a provably correct scheme for the establishment of real- time connections with deterministic, statistical, and best-effort delay buonds.