A FRAMEWORK OF ARCHITECTURAL CONCEPTS FOR HIGH-SPEED COMMUNICATION-SYSTEMS

Communication system architecture and protocol specification can affect protocol implementation. Common architectures, such as the ISO seven-layer model, and common data protocols, such as TP4 and TCP, unnecessarily limit the efficiency of data communication in several ways. Because of the efficiency limits imposed by existing architectures and protocols, papers were written about new architectures and protocols for high-speed data communication starting in the late 1980's. Surprisingly, many of the ideas discussed in these papers can be placed into a small number of categories. In this paper, we present a framework for understanding high-speed communication architectures and protocols, and show how concepts presented in recent literature fit into this framework. For each of the basic concepts that we discuss, we list the papers that cover the topic. The goal is to allow readers to compare more easily the ideas found in the various papers.