Multipoint Connection Management in High Speed Networks

We describe our Connection Management Access Protocol (CMAP) for managing multipoint connections in highspeed packet switched networks. A multipoint connection is a communication channel between two or more clients of the network, where all data sent by one client is received by all other clients. A point-to-point connection is a special case of a multipoint connection involving only two clients. CMAP specifies the access procedures exercised by clients to create, manipulate, and delete multipoint connections. Once a connection is established, clients exchange data using protocols that are specified separately from CMAP. We target our protocol to Broadband Integrated Services Digital Networks (BISDNs) employing the Asynchronous Transfer Mode (ATM) communication standard. To establish a multipoint connection, a client first creates a call between itself and the network. The client creating a call is designated the owner of the call. Immediately after creation, the owner is the only endpoint participating in the call. Additional endpoints are added either by invitation from the owner, invitation from another client of the network, or by explicitly requesting to be added. These three modes are sufficient for supporting point-topoint communication (for example, a telephone call), manyto-many communication (for example, a conference call), one-to-many communication (for example, broadcast video), and many-to-one communication (for example, error logging).