The Impact of Multicast Layering on Network Fairness

Many de nitions of fairness for multicast networks assume that sessions are single-rate, requiring that each multicast session transmits data to all of its receivers at the same rate. These de nitions do not account for multi-rate approaches, such as layering, that permit receiving rates within a session to be chosen independently. We identify four desirable fairness properties for multicast networks, derived from properties that hold within the max-min fair allocations of unicast networks. We extend the de nition of multicast max-min fairness to networks that contain multi-rate sessions, and show that all four fairness properties hold in a multirate max-min fair allocation, but need not hold in a single-rate max-min fair allocation. We then show that multi-rate max-min fair rate allocations can be achieved via intra-session coordinated joins and leaves of multicast groups. However, in the absence of coordination, the resulting max-min fair rate allocation uses link bandwidth ine cien...

• Type: Conference
• Year: 1999
• Where: SIGCOMM
• Authors: Dan Rubenstein, James F. Kurose, Donald F. Towsley
• Keywords: Communications, Desirable Fairness Properties, Max-min Fair, Multicast Networks, SIGCOMM 1999