ADAPTIVE: A dynamically assembled protocol transformation, integration and evaluation environment

Computer communication systems must undergo significant changes to keep pace with the increasingly demanding and diverse multimedia applications that will run on the next generation of high-performance networks. To facilitate these changes, we are developing A Dynamically Assembled Protocol Transformation, Integration and evaluation Environment (ADAPTIVE). ADAPTIVE provides an integrated environment for developing and experimenting with flexible transport system architectures that support lightweight and adaptive communication protocols for diverse multimedia applications running on high-performance networks. Our approach employs a collection of reusable ‘building-block’ protocol mechanisms that may be composed together automatically based upon functional specifications. The resulting protocols execute in parallel on several target platforms including shared-memory and message-passing multiprocessors. ADAPTIVE provides a framework for (1) determining the functionality of customized lightweight protocol configurations that efficiently support multimedia applications and (2) mapping this functionality onto efficient parallel process architectures.