Broadband Networks and Services: Architecture and Control Broadband networks to support a diverse combination of media and services present two interrelated challenges to the designers: how to devise the proper network architectures to efficiently deliver information, and how to realize the control and software infrastructure for end-to-end support of broadband applications.
Mario P. Vecchi · 1995
when trying to establish an interoperable environment. We find interoperability conflicts at all levels of the “protocol layers”: different physical components, different networking protocols, different coding formats, different authoring environments, etc. There are two weapons at our disposal to tackle interoperability problems: standardization and open architectures. Neither approach alone will do. In particular, we must define architectures that explicitly recognize that standardization will not be here to carry us all the way. Internetworking techniques, protocol and format ccnversion, mediation and negotiation - these are all going to be functions that will need to be implementedaspartofthe evolution offuture interactive broadband. Cost and generality will contend with each other, and there will be a learning curve we will traverse as these new technologies and products mature. The conceptual framework to define network architectures and their control structures is a key component to enable the future of broadband. interactive, multimedia, multiuser applications. The Architecture and Control session at the last IEEE Broadband ’95 Workshop featured presentations covering a wide range of important topics related to these issues [ 11. The first talk describes an evolutionary strategy to design the software infrastructure for interactive broadband networks that considers both centralized and distributed components to the architecture. The second talk presents a distributed object-oriented software framework to