Affiliations: LAAS du CNRS 7, avenue du Colonel Roche, 31077 Toulouse, France, Tel.: (33) 6 133 6256, Fax: (33) 6 133 6411, E-mail: chassot,diaz,alozes@laas.fr, http://www.laas.fr/laas.html
Abstract: Current communication systems are either based on connectionless (CL) or connection-oriented (CO) protocols. Many mechanisms have been proposed in each case but present CL and CO solutions are not conceptually related and there is a design gap between their definition and use. It is shown how CL and CO approaches appear as two specific cases of a much more general concept, the partial order connection (POC), which is presented here. A POC is an end-to-end connection that provides a partial order service where the objects can be delivered to the users in an order different from the transmitted one. Starting from this new concept, design principles of a general multimedia Transport connection are then introduced that allow the definition of a multimedia Quality of Service (QoS) consistent with general application requirements.
Keywords: Partial order, partial order connection, connection-oriented protocol, connectionless protocol, multimedia and high speed protocol, quality of service, multimedia Transport protocol, multimedia Transport service
