Session layer requirements for multicastinternets

Why a focus on the session layer of the ISO Reference Model in any discussion on networking? Quality of service (QoS) control and the whole elephant. The parable about the blind men describing an elephant is useful to the discussion. Each feels one part of the elephant's anatomy and reports that part as the whole elephant. So the man who feels the elephant's tail has a wholly different mind's picture than the one feeling the elephant's side. And so it goes with QoS in a multicast environment. Each exploratory feel seems to yield a different view. This paper attempts to add some vision and get some notion of what the whole elephant ought to look like. This exercise is, of course, complicated by the fact that we're looking at an elephant that has yet to be built. First, we must understand that multicasting won't happen until it happens at several cooperating ISO layers. And as we consider the ubiquitous multicast implications at each layer, the QoS issue pops up every time. Thus, we focus on QoS.