Glossary

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Broadcast Flow

A broadcast flow is the abstraction for a packet stream that is sent from a source node to all other nodes in a network. Broadcast flows are implemented by a Broadcast Layer.

Flow

A flow is the abstraction for a packet stream between a number of application processes. Ouroboros makes a clear distinction between Unicast flows and Broadcast flows.

Layer / layer

The Ouroboros model is subdivided in layers (lowercase), with similar intent as the TCP/IP model (5 layers) or OSI (7 layers) model which it aims to improve upon. Ouroboros is multi-Layered (capitalized), allowing networks to overlay each other. There are 2 types of Layers: Unicast Layers and Broadcast Layers, consisting of Unicast IPCPs and Broadcast IPCPs respectively.

We appreciate the fact that the different use of layer/Layer can be initially confusing, and have considered other options such as stratum, but for the time being, we stick to layer/Layer.

Unicast Flow

A unicast flow is a point-to-point packet stream between two processes. A flow is identified at each end by a flow descriptor. A unicast flow is implemented as a network flow between two unicast IPCPs. A network flow is identified by a 4-tuple <source address, source EID, destination address, destination EID>. The Endpoint Identifiers (EIDs) are agreed upon during Flow Allocation.

Whatevercast

A proposed RINA concept for the unification of unicast, anycast, multicast and broadcast. The RINA DIF will resolve the correct set of destination nodes based on the whatevercast name and a set of rules associated with it. Our attempt at implementing whatevercast led to us formulating the Ouroboros multicast conjecture.