Manycast: exploring the space between anycast and multicast in ad hoc networks

The characteristics of ad hoc networks naturally encourage the deployment of distributed services. Although current networks implement group communication methods, they do not support the needs of a mobile node that must locate one or more distributed servers. A node should not need detailed knowledge of network topology to choose servers with which it can communicate efficiently. To this end, manycast is a group communication scheme that enables communication with an arbitrary (user specified) number of group members. Anycast and multicast communication are special cases of manycast in which the target number of group members is one and infinity, respectively. We present manycast and discuss its use as a communication primitive, with specific attention to ad hoc networks. We advocate manycast support at the network layer. A manycast routing protocol enables an application to contact several nearby network nodes that implement a distributed service. We analyze some approaches to m...

• Type: Conference
• Year: 2003
• Where: MOBICOM
• Authors: Casey Carter, Seung Yi, Prashant Ratanchandani, Robin Kravets
• Keywords: Ad Hoc Networks, Distributed Service, Group Communication, MOBICOM 2003