A Layered Network Protocol for Packet Voice and Data Integration

This paper discusses considerations in the design of packet protocols suitable for interactive voice and interactive data communication, and then outlines a potential layered protocol architecture for the internal communication of a long haul network that might support packet voice and packet data transport. Following the protocol description, the paper compares potential delays for two voice/data packet network architectures: one using only link retransmission, the other using only edge retransmission for data (as included by the voice/data protocol). The underlying data traffic loads offered to the network are the same for the two methods, although they give rise to different traffic patterns. This preliminary analysis shows that the average delay using an edge-to-edge recovery discipline can be made comparable to the delays introduced with a link-by-link recovery discipline, if the network uses high speed transmission facilities (e.g., over 1 Mbits/s) having good error characteristics (e.g., one or less packets corrupted in each 1000), and sends up to 128 bytes of customer data as a single packet.