Rattlesnake

Abstract
In this extended abstract we describe the design of a local area network suitable for distributed multimedia communications. Multimedia applications require a communication infrastructure with capabilities beyond the current state of the art : real-time stream traffic, small end-to-end latency with little variation, high bandwidth and high availability. The bandwidth of the existing networks is by far not enough for distributed multimedia applications. Where in networks with a ring or bus topology such as : FDDI, Ethernet and the Cambridge fast ring, the aggregate network bandwidth is limited to the link bandwidth, in our project the aggregate bandwidth will be many times the link bandwidth and grows with the number of workstations attached to the network. A drawback of most of the available networks is that a bounded packet delay cannot he guaranteed . In our project, however, the real-time behaviour is an essential design issue. We can guarantee a bounded latency, therefore our network can be used by distributed real-time applications such as distributed process control and distributed multimedia applications

This publication has 1 reference indexed in Scilit: