Multicasting and real-time traffic scheduling for multimedia communication in ATM-LAN environment

Abstract

Multimedia applications constitute a significant future market, introduce new complex demands and concepts to communications, and will have a strong impact on network technology. To satisfy the diversity and dynamics of multimedia communication, flexibility at several levels is required. Multimedia communication faces the challenge of networking multimedia computing, storage systems, and presentation terminals in order to provide the necessary connectivity, interactivity, and quality on demand while flexibly and economically adapting to a changing environment. In this dissertation, we address the multicasting and real-time traffic scheduling for the multimedia communication in ATM-LAN Environment. We identify a typical ATM-LAN environment where ATM-LANs and the existing base of installed LANs, bridges, routers, and protocols are interconnected. We also present the requirements for the multimedia communications. We indicate that multicasting for ATM switch and real-time scheduling for Medium Access Network are maily needed to support the multimedia communication in ATM-LAN environment. Therefore we concentrate on the development of a efficient multicasting ATM switch and real-time scheduling algorithm for handling multimedia data with variable bit rates. We propose and analyze a new parallel multicast packet switch which easily approaches a maximum throughput of 100\% as the number of fanout and multicast rate are increased. The proposed multicast switch consists of a simple ring network and a point-to-point switch network. The ring network provided in the proposed switch overcomes the problems of clock synchronization and fairness of the slotted ring by synchronizing the ring to the time slot as used in the point-to-point switch and providing small amount of speed-up. Moreover, the significant drawbacks of the basic cascaded multicast fabric design are removed by separating the unicast and multicast packets before entering the switch fabric. This switch with th...