V-NET: a framework for a versatile network architecture to support real-time communication performance guarantees

The paper proposes a new network architecture, called the versatile network architecture (V-NET), which provides a framework for flexible support of communication requirements in real-time networks. Applications communicate over the V-NET by using simplex end-to-end network connections which support specific real-time and reliability characteristics tailored to meet the application's specified requirements. V-NET differs from other proposed architectures in that it does not assume one specific packet scheduling algorithm or a specific traffic policing mechanism. Instead, the V-NET has been designed to support a variety of packet scheduling algorithms and traffic policing mechanisms. This flexibility is an important design consideration as a real-time network architecture must accommodate existing and future multimedia applications.