The current Internet provides a single class ofbest-effort service - with no guarantee as to when oreven whether a packet is to be delivered. Networkapplications, however, have a wide variety of qualityof service requirements. Achieving the diverserequirements of the applications using thesingle-class service is a challenging task.In this book, we study providing real-time andprioritized data transfer over the best-effortInternet, emphasizing a practical application-levelapproach using TCP, which requires no change to thecurrent Internet architecture and transportprotocols. We exemplify this approach using threewidely used applications: multimedia streaming,low-priority data transfer, and multipath datatransfer. Our work demonstrates that the diverserequirements of a number of network applications canbe achieved using a practical application-levelapproach built on top of TCP, and intelligentlyutilizing the internal mechanisms in TCP candramatically simplify the design of anapplication-level service.This book is for both researchers and practitionersin the field, and graduate students who areinterested in computer networks.
