Performance evaluation of reliable multicast communication protocol with network support

One of the most important technical problems in reliable multicast protocol is to reduce redundant control packets and retransmitted packets. An approach for reducing them by making use of newly-invented network architecture, the active network technology, has been proposed. In the paper we compare a network-initiated approach, i.e. a reliable multicast protocol with network support, and conventional end-to-end approaches. These are compared under more realistic situations such as part of routers are equipped with the newly-invented active network technology. Our simulation results show that the network-initiated approach with 15% active routers outperforms conventional end-to-end approaches from the viewpoint of scalability. We also investigate the desirable location of active routers with a sophisticated network topology model, Tiers model, which reflects hierarchical structure of the Internet. Our simulation results suggest that at first active routers should be implemented in WANs because delay performance can be improved with a small number of active routers. After active routers are broadly implemented in WAN, the policy for location of active routers should be switched to MAN with expecting a decrease of redundant NAK transmission inside a network.