Glossary

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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 (O7s)

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 (RINA)

A proposed concept for the unification of unicast, anycast, multicast and broadcast. The proposed API is allocate(whatevercastname) and the network will resolve the correct set for you based on the whatevercast name and a set of rules associated with it. Our attempt at implementing this concept led to the Ouroboros multicast conjecture.