A distributed object platform infrastructure for multimedia applications

Although distributed object computing has developed rapidly over the past decade, and is now becoming commercially important, there remain key application areas inadequately supported by current standards and implementations. This paper describes research aimed at support for one of these areas: distributed soft real-time/multimedia applications. The approach is to provide a low level platform which offers generic middleware services useful for the implementation of a range of multimedia capable distributed object systems. The design of the platform is influenced on the one hand by the real-time/multimedia-oriented computational model of the RM-ODP and on the other hand by recent research results in the efficient engineering of communications systems and operating systems. The platform provides support for quality of service (QoS) and application specific protocols as required by multimedia capable distributed object systems. A novel scheme for flexible QoS specification and management is described. A performance evaluation of the platform is given and a sample application program is presented to illustrate the platform's API.

[1]  Donald Ervin Knuth,et al.  The Art of Computer Programming , 1968 .

[2]  Thu D. Nguyen,et al.  Implementing Network Protocols at User Level , 1993, SIGCOMM.

[3]  Douglas C. Schmidt,et al.  Evaluating the performance of demultiplexing strategies for real-time CORBA , 1997, GLOBECOM 97. IEEE Global Telecommunications Conference. Conference Record.

[4]  David D. Clark,et al.  Architectural considerations for a new generation of protocols , 1990, SIGCOMM '90.

[5]  Robbert van Renesse Masking the Overhead of Protocol Layering , 1996, SIGCOMM.

[6]  Donald E. Knuth,et al.  The art of computer programming: V.1.: Fundamental algorithms , 1997 .

[7]  Ramesh Govindan,et al.  Scheduling and IPC mechanisms for continuous media , 1991, SOSP '91.

[8]  Gordon Blair,et al.  Multimedia Computing: An Assessment of the State of the Art , 1991 .

[9]  Douglas C. Schmidt,et al.  The design of the TAO real-time object request broker , 1998, Comput. Commun..

[10]  Peter Druschel,et al.  Operating system support for high-speed communication , 1996, CACM.

[11]  Robbert van Renesse Masking the overhead of protocol layering , 1996, SIGCOMM 1996.

[12]  David Clark The structuring of systems using upcalls , 1985, SOSP 1985.

[13]  Henning Schulzrinne,et al.  RTP: A Transport Protocol for Real-Time Applications , 1996, RFC.

[14]  Jean-Bernard Stefani,et al.  Open Distributed Processing and Multimedia , 1997 .

[15]  J. Stefani,et al.  Submission to the Tina`96 Conference: Binding and Streams: the Retina Approach Binding and Streams: the Retina Approach , 1996 .

[16]  Gordon S. Blair,et al.  The Design of a QoS-Controlled ATM-Based Communications System in Chorus , 1995, IEEE J. Sel. Areas Commun..

[17]  David Hutchison,et al.  Integrated quality of service for multimedia communications , 1993, IEEE INFOCOM '93 The Conference on Computer Communications, Proceedings.

[18]  David D. Clark,et al.  The structuring of systems using upcalls , 1985, SOSP '85.

[19]  Pattie Maes,et al.  Concepts and experiments in computational reflection , 1987, OOPSLA '87.

[20]  David Clark,et al.  Architectural considerations for a new generation of protocols , 1990, SIGCOMM 1990.

[21]  Larry L. Peterson,et al.  The x-Kernel: An Architecture for Implementing Network Protocols , 1991, IEEE Trans. Software Eng..

[22]  D. Estrin,et al.  RSVP: a new resource reservation protocol , 1993, IEEE Communications Magazine.

[23]  P. Druschel,et al.  Operating system support for high-speed communication : Latest developments in operating systems , 1996 .

[24]  James W. Layland,et al.  Scheduling Algorithms for Multiprogramming in a Hard-Real-Time Environment , 1989, JACM.

[25]  Donald E. Knuth,et al.  The Art of Computer Programming, Volume I: Fundamental Algorithms, 2nd Edition , 1997 .

[26]  Naranker Dulay,et al.  A configurable protocol architecture for CORBA environments , 1997, Proceedings of the Third International Symposium on Autonomous Decentralized Systems. ISADS 97.