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Multimedia Experience
Intel's PC-RSVP Software is designed
for quality, multimedia interaction between connected PCs.
Connecting tens of millions of these powerful, personal computers throughout the world in a manner that allows them to easily interact with each other poses both the next great challenge and the next great opportunity to computer manufacturers, software developers, and our global society.
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PC manufacturers and software developers have collectively evolved the personal computer from a crude, number-crunching tool into a powerful device which delivers not only numeric computing capabilities, but may also provide full-motion video, animation, sound and more to deliver rich education, business, and entertainment experiences to individual users.
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The Challenge
The challenge of connecting PCs throughout the world is initially being met through the establishment of the Internet. However, making the physical connection between PCs is merely the first step to unleashing the power of truly connected PCs. The channel connecting them must also provide the bandwidth necessary to allow them to exchange their rich content — animation, full-motion video, audio, — in a timely manner if their users are to enjoy the richest possible experiences. Today’s channels of interaction and communication between intelligent PCs are substantially bandwidth-constrained.
In the long run, some bandwidth problems may be addressed with the development and deployment of new hardware solutions delivering more bandwidth (wider highways) to carry the increasing quantity of connected PC interactions. However, this is only a partial solution. Just like a growing city finds it cannot keep up with its transportation needs by simply adding lanes to its highways, the connected PC community will continually need to find new ways of allocating and using the existing bandwidth more effectively. In other words, the bandwidth challenge will likely continue to exist as long as new users join with us.
Meeting the Challenge
To meet this challenge, Intel is participating in an industry-wide effort to offer reserved bandwidth. This new standard defined by the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF), called RSVP (ReSerVation Protocol), is a mechanism for applications to reserve bandwidth to provide a quality user experience, despite the other traffic on the network. Intel encourages the development community to join with it in the development and deployment of this standard.
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