The trend toward the integration, into a single packet-switching or cell-switching network, of services intended to satisfy the different needs of multiple types of traffic calls for the design of protocols for multimedia communication. An essential prerequisite for such a design is that a service model be chosen; in other words, the services to be offered by the network must be selected and specified in detail. This paper presents the service models proposed, of being developed, by two groups within the Internet Community, by the ATM community, and by the Tenet Group; it also compares them, focusing on their common characteristics and their possible convergences, hence unveiling the outlines of the service models the first integrated-services networks to be deployed will implement, if the extensive experiments that are now needed will not be unsuccessful.

Date Published: 14 March 1995
PDF: 8 pages
Proc. SPIE 2417, Multimedia Computing and Networking 1995, (14 March 1995); doi: 10.1117/12.206059

Published in SPIE Proceedings Vol. 2417:
Multimedia Computing and Networking 1995
Arturo A. Rodriguez; Jacek Maitan, Editor(s)