A hybrid multicast connectivity solution for multi-party collaborative environments

• Published in: Multimedia tools and applications Vol. 44; no. 1; pp. 17 - 37
• Main Authors: Kim, Namgon, Kim, JongWon, Uram, Thomas D.
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Boston Springer US 01.08.2009; Springer Nature B.V
• Subjects: Bandwidths; Collaboration; Computer Communication Networks; Computer Science; Connectivity; Data Structures and Information Theory; End users; Internet Protocol; Internet service providers; Islands; Measurement techniques; Multimedia Information Systems; Protocol; Special Purpose and Application-Based Systems; Streaming media; Studies; Multicast connectivity; UDP multicast tunneling protocol; Advanced collaboration environment; Application-layer multicast; Multicast island
• ISSN: 1380-7501; 1573-7721
• DOI: 10.1007/s11042-009-0266-z

In multi-party collaborative environments, a group of users can share multiple media streams via IP multicasting. However, despite of the efficiency of IP multicast, it is not widely available and alternative application-layer multicast approaches are introduced. Application-layer multicast is advantageous, however, it incurs additional processing delays. In this paper, we present a new hybrid-style application-layer multicast solution that satisfies both network efficiency and easy deployment. We achieve this goal by connecting multicast islands through UDP tunnels employing UMTP (UDP multicast tunneling protocol). We also design a MPROBE protocol to remove multicast loop among multicast island in real Internet. We verify the feasibility of the proposed solution by implementing a prototype tool, AG Connector, that works on Access Grid multi-party collaborative environment.