APPARATUS, METHOD AND COMPUTER PROGRAM PRODUCT PROVIDING HIGH PERFORMANCE COMMUNICATION BUS HAVING PREFERRED PATH SOURCE ROUTING, MULTI-GUARANTEE QOS AND RESOURCE RESERVATION, MANAGEMENT AND RELEASE

摘要

Disclosed are methods, apparatus and computer program products, in accordance with exemplary embodiments of this invention, that provide a communication network having an enhanced data packet source routing procedure, that provide enhanced QoS functionality in a communication network where a first network protocol layer implements QoS with relative guaranties and best effort, while an underlying layer provides physical resource distribution between data pipes with absolute QoS guaranties, and that provide provides resource reservation, management and releasing for per flow resource management with strict/hard QoS guaranties. The communication network may employ optical and/or electrical data paths.