Design and Implementation of a Multimedia Protocol Suite in a BSD UNIX Kernel

This research is supported in part by the National Science Foundation Grant No. NCR-9111323 and Grant no. STI-9108764.

Development of distributed multimedia applications requires support for coordination and temporal/causal synchronization of traffic over related streams. Our current research involves investigation of appropriate OS and communication abstractions to support such applications. Towards this goal, we have designed and implemented MCP, a suite of transport and session layer protocols, in the framework of a standard BSD Unix networking platform. MCP contains two new abstractions. First, MCP contains a token-based mechanism for coordination of traffic over a multipoint connection. Second, MCP includes an abstraction called a multi-flow conversation that enforces both temporal and causal synchronization among related data streams. This paper discusses Unix kernel implementation of MCP and describes our experience in using MCP.