HighSpeed LAN, MAN, and ATM Protocols as Multimedia Carriers

Multimedia applications integrate a variety of media, namely, audio, video, images, graphics, text, and data, each of which has different characteristics and quality-of-service (QoS) requirements. In this chapter, we study several existing (commercially available) and newly proposed LAN (local area networks), MAN (metropolitan area networks), and WAN (wide area networks), mainly ATM (asynchronous transfer mode) protocols, and evaluate their performance for multimedia communications. Specifically, for LAN protocols, we study 100Base-T Ethernets, Ethernet++(the Priority Mode CSMA/CD Protocol), and 100VG-AnyLAN (the Demand Priority MAC Protocol), and compare their collision rates, delay, and throughput in supporting messages of different priorities. For MAN protocols, we first present the FDDI (Fiber Distributed Data Interface). Next, we study four reservation-based MAN protocols, including the IEEE 802.6 DQDB (Distributed Queue Dual Bus), the CRMA (Cyclic-Reservation Multiple-Access), the DQMA (Distributed-Queue multiple-Access), and the FDQ (Fair Distributed Queue) protocols, and compare their performance under various delay and loss constraints.

For the ATM protocol, we first present several ABR (Available Bit-Rate) congestion control mechanisms and compare their performance in supporting messages of different burstiness. A new design, the MFRP (Modified Fast Resolution Protocol), is then proposed for ATM burst-level admission control. Its performance is evaluated against existing methods including the FRP (Fast Resolution Protocol), and the AFRP (Adaptive Fast Resolution Protocol). We believe that the simulation experiments and results presented in this chapter will provide important metrics of evaluating high-speed protocols for supporting multimedia traffic. They will also give insight for researchers to explore the essence of different high-speed protocols as multimedia carriers.