Reliable Burst Protocol — Deterministic streaming data transport

Reliable Burst Protocol (RBP) is a streaming protocol intended for use over packetized data networks to provide deterministic ordered and guaranteed data transmission. It has been designed to support configuration-based bounding of worst-case operation, with minimal performance impact. Retransmissions of data only occur for messages not received by the destination node. This allows for bounded worst case recovery in the event of packet loss, as well as efficient use of network resources, as retransmission of successfully received messages is avoided. Support for multiple simultaneous burst transmissions on a RBP flow provide for avoidance of “stop-and-wait” behavior. Connection loss detection is provided through keep-alive messages and retransmission / keep-alive timeout events. Granularity of messages, frequency of data acknowledgment events, and maximum supported en-route data is managed through per-flow configuration metrics. This configurability makes RBP adaptable based upon underlying network topology.