Guaranteed Services
Today, the Internet is tailored around the idea of a “best effort service” which definitely is fine for the wide majority of applications. Of course, this statement only holds if significant overload situations of specific network components can be avoided. Thus, the majority of problems are solved by “throwing bandwidth” at these problems.
For some applications, such as TV production with live transmission or specific kinds of grid computing, a significantly more reliable network service is required. This kind of service can only be reached by advance reservations and efficiency optimized scheduling of future data streams. Basically, the implementation of this kind of reservations can be achieved by techniques such as MPLS or GMPLS. However, there still is a wide gap been fundamental feasibility and flexible, practical applicability in this field. The work group Communication Systems has been active in the area of guaranteed services for many years with financial support by the German Research Foundation, the Federal Ministry of Education and Research and by the European Union.
For further information please contact: detens@cs.uni-bonn.de