REAL-TIME COMMUNICATION IN PACKET-SWITCHED NETWORKS

The dramatically increased bandwidths and processing capabilities of future high-speed networks make possible many distributed real-time applications, such as sensor-based applications and multimedia services. Since these applications will have traffic characteristics and performance requirements that differ dramatically from those of current data-oriented applications, new communication network architectures, and protocols will be required. In this paper we discuss the performance requirements and traffic characteristics of various real-time applications, survey recent developments in the areas of network architecture and protocols for supporting real-time services, and develop frameworks in which these, and future, research efforts can be considered.