An Investigation Of The Scalability Of Reliable Multicast Protocols On The Internet

MS Thesis Presentation

Boris Ramos
WPI Computer Science Department
Advisor: Prof. David Finkel
Reader: Prof. Craig Wills

PEDS Research Group
Monday, April 28, 1997
11 a.m. - 12 noon
Fuller Labs 246

There are several protocols created for reliable multicasting, but there are many questions which arise when trying to apply it to a real internet network. One faces scalability and reliability issues of such protocols on the Internet when dealing with a variety of topologies and processing times of different systems that are found on the Internet. Using a simulation study, we analyze the performance of the Sender and Receiver-Initiated reliable multicast protocols on the Internet. Sender-Initiated reliable multicast protocols use positive acknowledgments (ACKs) sent from the receivers to the sender in order to control the packet loss, and places the burden of controlling the packet loss on the sender. On the other hand, Receiver-Initiated reliable multicast protocols use negative acknowledgments (NAKs) in order to control the packet loss, and places the burden of controlling the packet loss on the receivers. Previous studies have shown the superiority of Receiver-Initiated protocols over Sender-Initiated protocols. We concluded that the Sender-Initiated protocol is not reliable and scalable when applied to a real internet network. Furthermore, Receiver- Initiated protocols are not completely scalable and reliable when they are applied to the Internet, so when they are used there must be some restrictions utilized.

Maintained by webmaster@wpi.edu
Last modified: Sep 27, 2006, 16:05 EDT