Improving reliable multicast using active parity encoding services
Computer Networks: The International Journal of Computer and Telecommunications Networking
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Traditional reliable multicast protocols for the Internet require large amounts of bandwidth to support reliable delivery of data to numerous receivers. In this paper, we propose and evaluate novel protocols that combine active repair service (a.k.a. local recovery) and parity encoding (a.k.a. forward error correction or FEC) techniques. We show that compared to other repair service protocols, our protocols require less buffer inside the network, and maintain the low bandwidth requirements of previously proposed repair service / FEC combination protocols. Our protocols also reduce the amount of FEC processing at repair servers, moving more of this processing to the end-hosts. Last, we examine repair service / FEC combination protocols in an environment where loss rates are different across domains within the network. We find that in such environments, repair services are more effective than FEC at reducing bandwidth utilization. Furthermore, adding FEC to a repair services protocol not only reduces buffer requirements at repair servers, but also reduces bandwidth utilization in domains with high loss, or in domains with large populations of receivers.