1 Introduction
The focus of this assignment is to learn about protocol development and the information that is kept in a header to support the functionality of a protocol. Protocol design is always a balancing act between introducing functionality that relies on additional header information and the overhead that the additional header information introduces.
2 Protocol Details
The aim of the protocol is to provide a distribution mechanism for video, audio, and text content using a publish-subscribe mechanism based on UDP datagrams. The encoding of the header information of this protocol should be implemented in a binary format.
The protocol involves a number of actors: One or more subscribers, a broker, and one or more producers. A subscriber issues subscriptions for content to a broker and receives published content from this broker. The broker processes subscriptions and publications, keeps records of publications, and forwards content from publishers to potential subscribers. The header information that you included in your packets has to support the identification of subscriptions and published content – potentially consisting of a number of packets and the management of subscriptions and publications by the broker.
