A Framework for Qualitative Communications Using Big Packet Protocol
Richard Z. Li, Kiran Makhijani, Hamed Yousefi, Cédric Westphal, Lijun Dong, Tim Wauters, Filip De Turck · 2019
In the current Internet architecture, a packet is a minimal or fundamental unit upon which different actions such as classification, forwarding, or discarding are performed by the network nodes. When faced with constrained or poor network conditions, a packet is subjected to undesirable drops and re-transmissions, resulting in unpredictable delays and subsequent traffic overheads in the network. Alternately, we introduce qualitative communication services which allow partial, yet timely, delivery of a packet instead of dropping it entirely. These services allow breaking down packet payloads into smaller units (called chunks), enabling much finer granularity of bandwidth utilization.