Parallel Transport Protocol Proposal

Introduction This document defines a Parallel Transport Protocol (PTP) that permits parallel data flow between a wide variety of interconnected equipment configurations. The intent of the protocol is to provide bandwidth improvements for large transfers which scale implicitly with increasing physical parallelism (e.g. with increasing numbers of devices or increasing network parallel interconnectivity). Parallel transport will be defined as a connection mode transport application which will use standard transport providers for data movement, and standard transport interfaces for implementation. The protocol will define: 1. A procedure for managing parallel data flow. 2. The required data structures to be exchanged. Data will be moved between sources and sinks in parallel. Any combination of segments of files, physical devices, memory buffers, or network locations may be the source or sink of the data. Design Objectives 1. Define a parallel external interface between heterogeneo