Quality of Service and Experience in Active and Conventional Networks. Mappping QoS to QoE Using an Agent-Based Platform

In effect, we have built a big centralized timesharing system with just the users distributed. One observation that does relate to specific properties of ATM is the fact that switches are permitted to drop cells if they get congested. Dropping even one cell probably means waiting for a timeout and having the whole packet be retransmitted. For services that need a uniform rate, such as playing music, this could be a problem. (Oddly enough, the ear is far more sensitive than the eye to irregular delivery.) As a consequence of these and other problems, while high-speed networks in general and ATM in particular introduce new opportunities, taking advantage of them will not be simple. Considerable research will be needed before we know how to deal with them effectively. 2.3. THE CLIENT-SERVER MODEL While ATM networks are going to be important in the future, for the moment they are too expensive for most applications, so let us go back to more conventional networking. At first glance, layered protocols along the OSI lines look like a fine way to organize a distributed system ...»