Multipoint communication — simultaneous transmission from multiple sources to a group of receivers — has numerous applications on Internet. However, the problem is mainly studied in the domain of multicasting for a group involving a single source, restricting the consideration of multiple sources to the performance analysis of the proposed solutions. Furthermore, existing protocols in the literature only consider as a design issue a single metric, and mostly operate without regarding a delay constraint. In this paper, we examine the multiple-source delayconstrained multipoint communication problem with dynamic membership. We characterize potential solutions, and show that expanding the solution space to include more efficient solutions can enhance the development of delayconstrained multipoint paths.
Ayse Karaman, Hossam S. Hassanein