Evaluation of high speed LAN protocols as multimedia carriers

The complexsity of multimedia applications, which integrate a variety of information sources, such as audio, voice, graphics, images, animation, and full-motion video, into a wide range of applications, stresses all the components of computer and communication systems. Many new ideas have been proposed and implemented for advanced LAN (Local Area Network) protocols in order to support multimedia networking. In this paper we study three recently proposed high speed LAN protocols including the 100Base-T Fast Ethernet, the Ethernet++, and the 100VG-AnyLAN. We also propose a new enhancement for the 100VG-AnyLAN. For these four protocol, we describe their design methodology, strengths, weaknesses, and compare their performance in supporting multimedia communications including both real-time and non-real-time traffic. We believe that the results and discussions presented here provide important information for network designers and engineers when designing or deciding network protocols for multimedia systems.