PWP: An Architecture for Guaranteed Network Services

Some distributed applications function well only when guarantees are made on the maximum latency which the applications’ packets will experience. Common packet-switched networks, such as the current public Internet, do not provide straightforward mechanisms for deriving such guarantees. Two approaches to the problem of bounding packet-switched network latency are presented: PWP-Sporadic, and PWP-Rate, each of which corresponds to a well-known model of real-time tasks. Feasibility relations are presented, and the relative benefits of each are discussed. Finally, critical issues in the deployment of PWP-Rate are explored.