A hybrid multicast connectivity solution for multi-party collaborative environments

  • Authors:
  • Namgon Kim;Jongwon Kim;Thomas D. Uram

  • Affiliations:
  • GIST Networked Media Lab., Gwangju, South Korea 500-712;GIST Networked Media Lab., Gwangju, South Korea 500-712;Argonne National Laboratory, Argonne, USA 60439

  • Venue:
  • Multimedia Tools and Applications
  • Year:
  • 2009

Quantified Score

Hi-index 0.00

Visualization

Abstract

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.