Pittsburgh, PA — (press release excerpt) — TimeSys Corporation has announced enhancements to its TimeSys Linux/RT operating system distribution that add guaranteed real-time and Quality of Service (QoS) networking support. The new QoS networking support comes in addition to other real-time features within the TimeSys Linux/RT operating system.

Dr. Raj Rajkumar, cofounder and chairman of TimeSys, says, “With the addition of guaranteed real-time network QoS, TimeSys has added the capability to enable multimedia over the intranet/Internet and stimulate whole new industry segments in VoIP, multimedia appliances and set-top boxes. The beauty of this solution is that it works with existing network protocols including TCP, UDP, IP, SIP, SNMP, RSVP and MPLS.”

Network Quality of Service is made possible in TimeSys Linux/RT software by an abstraction called “Network Bandwidth Reservation.” The TimeSys Linux/RT distribution already offers CPU bandwidth reservations through which an application can specify a percentage of processor allocation, as well as a frequency and deadline guaranteed to be available only for its usage.

Network bandwidth reservation works in a similar manner, in which applications can specify a required amount of data transfer over a specified period of time (e.g., 100 Kbits every 50ms, or 250 Kbits every 80ms). This guaranteed transfer rate may be applied to sending or receiving. Multiple guaranteed network reservations with different parameters can co-exist. Thus, this feature offers control over both data throughput and latency, thereby satisfying real-time and QoS constraints. Typical applications that can benefit from such capabilities include IP Phones, Voice over IP (VOIP), multimedia servers, web servers, video conferencing applications, set-top boxes, digital television, and Internet appliances.

Much like the CPU reservation abstraction in the TimeSys Linux/RT OS, the network bandwidth reservation available to a process is strictly enforceable. Hence, 'consumption firewalls' are built around applications so that other less demanding applications can continue to make progress. This enables multiple network applications to make forward and timely progress simultaneously, even in the presence of greedy applications that may try to consume all available network bandwidth. For example, one can web-browse, download files, and send email while watching “glitch free” video on the same appliance at the same time.

The TimeSys networking QoS support will be supplied as a loadable kernel module and will be licensed on a per-unit royalty basis. The product will be available in 4Q 2000.

 
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