Paper review: Integrated Services in the Internet Architecture: an Overview

Reviewer: Mike Liu

  1. State the problem the paper is trying to solve.
  2. The main problem the memo is trying to solve is how to extend the Internet architecture and protocols to provide integrated services, i.e. to support real-time as well as the current non-real-time service of IP.
  3. State the main contribution of the paper: solving a new problem, proposing a new algorithm, or presenting a new evaluation (analysis). If a new problem, why was the problem important? Is the problem still important today? Will the problem be important tomorrow?  If a new algorithm or new evaluation (analysis), what are the improvements over previous algorithms or evaluations? How do they come up with the new algorithm or evaluation? 
  4. The main contribution of this memo is that it gives a detailed proposal of to extend the Internet architecture and protocols to provide integrated services. The extension is necessary to meet the growing need for real-time service for a variety of new applications, including teleconferencing, remote seminars, telescience, and distributed simulation. The problem is important today and will continue to be important tommorow as the demand for real-service over the internet increases. Their work is based on much discussion and research on Integrated Services over the past few years.
  5. Summarize the (at most) 3 key main ideas (each in 1 sentence.) 
  6. The three 3 key main ideas are: (1) Before real-time applications such as remote video, multimedia conferencing, visualization, and virtual reality can be broadly used, the Internet infrastructure must be modified to support real-time quality of service (QoS), which provides some control over end-to-end packet delays. (2) Network operators are requesting the ability to control the sharing of bandwidth on a particular link among different traffic classes and this facility is commonly called controlled link-sharing. (3) The authors presents in their memo an IS extension of the Internet, real-time service models, traffic control ( the forwarding algorithms used in routers ), and RSVP, their design of a resource setup protocol compatible with the assumption of their IS model.
  7. Critique the main contribution
  8. What lessons should researchers and builders take away from this work. What (if any) questions does this work leave open?
  9. The lessons that researchers should take away from this work are that it seems possible and viable to provide manageable and widespread integrated services on the Internet. The memo provides a framework for doing so and a list for what should potentially provided to manage and administer such a system. It should be used a guideline for designing future systems.