Quanta is a cross-platform adaptive networking toolkit that supports the data delivery requirements of interactive and bandwidth-intensive applications. Programmers can specify the data transfer characteristics of their applications at a high level, which Quanta then transparently translates into appropriate networking decisions. Quanta latest release is compliant with both 32-bit and 64-bit architectures.

Quanta’s innovative techniques accelerate data distribution for applications that require access to massive amounts of data at extremely high speeds. It provides data transport protocols, including Parallel TCP, Forward Error Correction (FEC) and Reliable Blast UDP (RBUDP), a UDP-based scheme to accelerate reliable data transmission over fat networks. LambdaStream, a streaming protocol currently under development, provides high-speed streaming transfers for ultra-high-resolution images over long-distance high-bandwidth networks.

In the near future, Quanta will allow applications to reserve, provision and make optimum use of light paths in all-optical networks, using Photonic Interdomain Negotiator (PIN), an inter-domain optical signaling gateway currently under development (supported by NSF SCI-0123399). PIN will enable applications to make light-path reservations spanning multiple optical domains. The PIN services layer supports inter-domain routing, signaling and global resource discovery. It translates Quanta’s application-initiated signaling requests into native signaling protocols for each sub-domain, allowing applications to be coded once, yet operate over heterogeneous optical domains.

The following application toolkits rely on the Quanta communications middleware:

• LambdaRAM
• JuxtaView
• Vol-a-Tile
• TeraVision