Mumbai University > Computer Engineering > Sem 8 > Parallel & Distributed System

Marks: 10M

Year: May 2016

Stream-oriented communication

1. Support for continuous media.

2. Streams in distributed systems

3. Stream management

Continuous media

Observation

All communication facilities discussed so far are essentially based on a discrete, that is time-independent exchange of information

Continuous media

Characterized by the fact that values are time dependent:

a. Audio

b. Video

c. Animations

d. Sensor data (temperature, pressure, etc.)

Transmission modes

Different timing guarantees with respect to data transfer:

Asynchronous: no restrictions with respect to when data is to be delivered

Synchronous: define a maximum end-to-end delay for individual data packets

Isochronous: define a maximum end-to-end delay and maximum delay variance (jitter is bounded)

Stream

Definition

A (continuous) data stream is a connection-oriented communication facility that supports isochronous data transmission.

Some common stream characteristics

1. Streams are unidirectional

2. There is generally a single source, and one or more sinks

3. Often, either the sink and/or source is a wrapper around hardware (e.g., camera, CD device, TV monitor)

4. Simple stream: a single flow of data, e.g., audio or video

5. Complex stream: multiple data flows, e.g., stereo audio or combination audio/video