Multicast transport protocol analysis: self-similar sources

Abstract

We study the traffic that scalable multicast protocols generate in terms of message delays over the network as well as traffic counts at the link level in the case of self-similar sources. In particular, we study Bimodal Multicast and Scalable Reliable Multicast protocols proposed for scalable reliable multicasting. These protocols are based on different mechanisms for recovering from message losses and providing scalability. We discuss the protocol mechanisms as the main underlying factor in our empirical results. Our results can be considered as a contribution to the general problem of integration of multicast communication to large scale.