Flow synchronization protocol

High-speed networks still facilitate the advent of multimedia and distributed applications. An adaptive flow synchronization protocol that permits synchronized delivery of data to and from geographically distributed sites is presented. Applications include inter-stream synchronization, synchronized delivery of information in a multisite conference, and synchronization for concurrency control in distributed computations. The contributions of this protocol in the area of flow synchronization are the introduction of an adaptive synchronization delay, the flexibility to maintain multiple synchronization groups, and the use of a modular architecture that permits the client application to tailor synchronization calculations to its service requirements. Network protocols capable of maintaining network clock synchronization in the millisecond range are used