CLIENT REQUIREMENTS FOR REAL-TIME COMMUNICATION SERVICES


                        _D_o_m_e_n_i_c_o _F_e_r_r_a_r_i
                    Computer Science Division
   Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Sciences
                    University of California
          and International Computer Science Institute
                  Berkeley, California, U.S.A.


A real-time communication service provides its clients  with  the
ability  to  specify their performance requirements and to obtain
guarantees about the satisfaction of those requirements. In  this
paper,  we  propose a set of performance specifications that seem
appropriate for such services; they include various types of  de-
lay  bounds,  throughput  bounds, and reliability bounds. We also
describe other  requirements  and  desirable  properties  from  a
client's  viewpoint, and the ways in which each requirement is to
be translated to make it suitable for lower levels in the  proto-
col  hierarchy. Finally, we present some examples of requirements
specification, and discuss some of the possible objections to our
approach.