Reliable multi-destination transfer of data in a local area network

The author discusses some of the performance aspects of a connection oriented protocol such as TCP/IP or a connectionless protocol especially in terms of their ability to distribute identical data sets to two or more devices in a local area network (LAN). In particular, the author describes an adaptable and reliable multicast data transfer protocol. When compared to an efficient TCP/IP data distribution scheme, the multicast data transfer protocol reduces considerably the time needed to distribute the data and also reduces considerably the load on the LAN. Compared with the TCP/IP method the multicast data transfer protocol requires considerably lower CPU resources for the client but more CPU resources for each of the servers.<
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