Deterministic Characterization and Network Utilizations 
            for Several Distributed Real-time Applications


         Edward W. Knightly, Robert F. Mines, and Hui Zhang
                         EECS Department
                University of California, Berkeley
                               and
              International Computer Science Institute



In this paper, we investigate several distributed real-time
applications. The applications are real-time in that they require
per-connection end-to-end performance bounds. These bounds, in terms of
throughput,  delay, and delay-jitter, are provided by the network via
two mechanisms: admission control to limit access to the network and
priority scheduling to enforce the guarantees.  Within this frame-work,
we perform a deterministic analysis on the applications and
investigate, via the admission control criteria, the resulting
utilization of the network. A deterministic analysis must analyze the
worst-case properties of the sources in order to provide absolute
bounds on throughput and delay.  Three distributed real-time
applications are analyzed in this paper:  a video conferencing tool, a
tool for combustion modeling using distributed computing, and an MPEG
video archival system. Each has minimum performance requirements that
must be provided by the network. By investigating these applications,
we provide insights to the traffic characteristics and achievable
network utilizations for practical real-time loads.