Multimedia synchronization protocols for broadband integrated services

Protocols to provide synchronization of data elements with arbitrary temporal relationships of both stream and non-stream broadband traffic types are proposed. It is specified that the provision of a synchronization function be performed within a packet switched network, and, accordingly, a two-level communication architecture is presented. The lower level, called the network synchronization protocol (NSP), provides the ability to establish and maintain individual connections with specified synchronization characteristics. The upper level, the application synchronization protocol (ASP), supports an integrated synchronization service for multimedia applications. The ASP identifies the temporal relationships among an application´s data objects and manages the synchronization of arriving data for playout. The proposed NSP and ASP are mapped to the session and application layers of the open-systems-interconnection (OSI) reference model, respectively