FLOW SYNCHRONIZATION PROTOCOL

We present an adaptive how synchronization protocol that permits synch ronized delivery of data to and from geographically distributed sites. Applications include inter-stream synchronization, synchronized deliv ery of information in a multisite conference, and synchronization for concurrency control in distributed computations. The contributions of this protocol in the area of flow synchronization are the ability to s ynchronize over arbitrary topologies, the introduction of an adaptive synchronization delay, the flexibility to maintain multiple synchroniz ation groups, and the use of a modular architecture that permits the a pplication to tailor synchronization calculations to its service requi rements. We take advantage of network protocols capable of maintaining network clock synchronization in the millisecond range.