The workstation as global communication interface

The DASH project which is concerned with the logical design of large-scale multimedia systems and in particular, with the design of operating system software for its nodes is discussed. The system requirements include support for multimedia communication (this may require real-time scheduling techniques throughout the system) and a naming and security architecture that scales to global size and that accommodates mutually distrustful groups and subgroups. A prototype distributed system design to address these requirements is being built. The author describes the goals of the DASH project and provides a sketch of the DASH design, with an emphasis on its network communication architecture.<>