A Scheduling Algorithm for Time Bounded Delivery of Packets on the Internet

This thesis aims to provide a better scheduling algorithm for Real-Time delivery of packets. A number of emerging applications such as VoIP, Tele-immersive environments, distributed media viewing and distributed gaming require real-time delivery of packets. Currently the scheduling algorithms used to decide the priority ordering over packets only consider the deadline as the parameter. This may not be optimal, since it ignores the network traffic over the routes that these packets may take. The idea of this thesis is to propose a method of calculating a probability measure of each packet meeting it's deadline at every intermediate node. This probability measure is based on the time left for deadline to expire, the number of nodes further in the packets route to reach it's destination and the traffic on this route. The algorithm assumes a certain level on time synchronisation over the network.