Reliable Multicast Services For Tele-collaboration

M.S. Thesis
December 1996


David G. Bassett
Department of Computer Science
University of Virginia
Charlottesville, VA 22903

Abstract

This thesis presents a new approach to reliable multicasting tailored to meet the requirements of tele-collaborative applications. We explore the issues of reliable multicast through a systematic analysis of the requirements of tele-collaborative applications. As a result of this analysis, we present a reliable multicast design space consisting of the following dimensions: ordering, reliability, group size, group membership, persistence, and receiver storage. Persistence, a dimension referring to the lifetime of packets at senders in receiver-initiated reliable multicast protocols, is introduced as a new dimension. We show that persistence overcomes many of the drawbacks of previous receiver-initiated protocols. We present a novel approach referred to as Logical Persistence in which packets are stored based on a logical partitioning of data. We also present a new protocol called the Tunable Multicast Protocol (TMP). This protocol provides a wide collection of services that can be specified by a number of tuning parameters. TMP provides a reusable and flexible reliable multicast protocol capable of efficiently supporting a wide variety of tele-collaborative applications.