VMTP: a transport protocol for the next generation of communication systems

The Versatile Message Transaction Protocol (VMTP) is a transport-level protocol designed to support remote procedure call, multicast and real-time communication. The protocol is optimized for efficient page-level network file access in particular. In this paper, we describe the significant aspects of the VMTP design, including the VMTP treatment of sessions, addressing, duplicate suppression, flow control and retransmissions plus its provision for multicast. The VMTP design reflects a change in the use of computer communication as well as a change in the underlying hardware base for the next generation of communication systems. It also challenges certain established notions in the design of protocols.