RMX: Reliable Multicast for Heterogeneous Networks

—Although IP Multicast is an effective network primitive for best-effort, large-scale, multi-point communication, many multicast applications such as shared whiteboards, multi-player games and software distribution require reliable data delivery. Building services like reliable sequenced delivery on top of IP Multicast has proven to be a hard problem. The enormous extent of network and end-system heterogeneity in multipoint communication exacerbates the design of scalable end-to-end reliable multicast protocols. In this paper, we propose a radical departure from the traditional end-to-end model for reliable multicast and instead propose a hybrid approach that leverages the successes of unicast reliability protocols such as TCP while retaining the efficiency of IP multicast for multi-point data delivery. Our approach splits a large heterogeneous reliable multicast session into a number of multicast data groups of co-located homogeneous participants. A collection of application-aware ...

• Type: Conference
• Year: 2000
• Where: INFOCOM
• Authors: Yatin Chawathe, Steven McCanne, Eric A. Brewer
• Keywords: Communications, INFOCOM 2000, IP Multicast, Multicast, Reliable Multicast