Coexistence of streaming and packetized data throughout the protocol stack

The Internet is the most widely deployed network. Still, there are several legacy services of massive popularity, like cable TV, carried over proprietary networks and may need to undergo modifications for future migration into the Internet. Instead of converting the applications´ transmission formats, this paper discusses the alternative of having several networks coexisting in the Internet to share the deployed infrastructure. This network would require the support a larger number of protocols and standards at almost every layer of the protocol stack, including the network layer. This is called Symbiotic Protocol (SP) network in this paper. This paper discusses some of the design challenges associated with network management and node architecture of an SP network and presents some preliminary performance results in term of throughput and transmission efficiency of SP nodes.