The design and implementation of a multicast real-time multimedia protocol

Many multimedia applications require guaranteed quality of service (QoS) in communication networks. Typically, the QoS includes bandwidth, delay, and delay jitter. This paper presents a real-time protocol to support multimedia communications in which the connections are established with efficient resource reservation and proper admission control. During data transmission, the rate, jitter control, and packet scheduling techniques are employed to fulfil the performance contract. The protocol also incorporates a multicast function to provide group communications. This protocol is implemented on a high-speed network which consists of interconnected ATM switches, FDDI networks, routers, and hosts. Experiments have been carried out to evaluate the effectiveness of the QoS guaranteed protocol. Measured results indicate that the proposed protocol performs well to guarantee the QoS in terms of the bandwidth, delay, and delay jitter.