Real-Time Communication
                     in Packet-Switching Wide-Area Networks


                                _D_o_m_e_n_i_c_o _F_e_r_r_a_r_i
9                           Computer Science Division
                                EECS Department
                            University of California
                  and International Computer Science Institute
                              Berkeley, California








                                    Abstract


               The increasing  importance  of  distributed  multimedia
          applications  and  the emergence of user interfaces based on
          digital audio and digital video will soon require that  com-
          puter  communication networks offer real-time services. This
          paper argues that the feasibility of  providing  performance
          guarantees in a packet-switching wide-area network should be
          investigated, and describes a possible approach.  We present
          a model of the network to be studied, formulate the problem,
          give a definition of the  guarantees  to  be  provided,  and
          describe a scheme for the establishment of real-time connec-
          tions with deterministic, statistical, and best-effort delay
          bounds.




















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