Adaptive smooth multicast protocol for multimedia data transmission

We introduce Adaptive Smooth Multicast Protocol (ASMP), for multimedia transmission over best-effort networks. The smoothness lays in the calculation and adaptation of the transmission rate, which is based on dynamic estimation of protocol parameters and dynamic adjustment of the ldquosmoothness factorrdquo. ASMP key attributes are: (a) adaptive scalability to large sets of receivers, (b) TCP-friendly behavior, (c) high bandwidth utilization, and finally (d) smooth transmission rates, which are suitable for multimedia applications. We evaluate the performance of ASMP and investigate its behavior under various network conditions through extensive simulations, conducted with the network simulator software (ns2).