A set of operating system mechanisms to support multi-media applications

The operating system of a terminal in a multimedia communication network needs mechanisms to manipulate the network interface and to direct the information flow. Some approaches and hardware support that can provide these capabilities are reported. These include a connector object to control the information exchange among the network interface and the voice, data, and image peripherals and the concept of an active device to provide uniform interfaces among information sources and sinks involved in a multimedia application. Voice, data, and image are packetized and transmitted on a single network. Packet streams of different media are multiplexed into a multimedia virtual circuit, which maintains the temporal relationship among the different information streams. Schemes to manage resources, such as network bandwidth and memory buffers to support multimedia applications, are also reported