Providing a transport service over IP that meets the timeliness and availability requirements of soft real-time applications has turned out to be a complex task. Although network solutions such as IntServ, DiffServ, MPLS, and VRRP have been suggested, these solutions many times fail to provide a transport service for soft real-time applications end to end. Additionally, they have so far only been modestly deployed. In light of this, this thesis considers transport protocols for soft real-time applications. Part I of the thesis focuses on the design and analysis of transport protocols...