During the course of this project, the principal investigator  will investigate the design and performance of a new class of  packet switching networks, called Burst Scheduling networks, for  supporting multimedia applications.  Burst Scheduling networks are  designed for carrying video, audio, and data traffic, and  characterized by: (i) use of virtual clock values in channel  scheduling, (ii) packet flows (in particular, video flows)  processed efficiently in bursts, and (iii) delay and delay jitter   guarantees provided to packet flows that satisfy a Flow  Specification (a new model of packet video motivated by our recent  study of MPEG video). The primary objective of the proposed project is to  investigate network design issues, such as, statistical versus  deterministic performance guarantees, demand assignment strategies,  efficient scheduling algorithms, fault-tolerant architecture and  protocols, modeling of audio and delay-sensitive data traffic, flow  control and buffer management strategies.  The secondary objective  of the proposed project is to investigate the design and  prototyping of a transport protocol that makes use of performance  guarantees provided by Burst Scheduling networks to support  multimedia applications. Some of the proposed research problems will be investigated  using mathematical methods.  All of the research problems will be  investigated experimentally in the Networking Research Laboratory  of the Department of Computer Sciences.  Specifically, we plan to  add capabilities to a simulator of Burst Scheduling networks to  enable the proposed research activities.  The simulator will be run  on a high-performance workstation and will be connected to other  workstations where the prototype transport protocol and a real  multimedia application will be run, supplying video, audio, and  data flows to the simulator.