Reliable data distribution using multicast groups in industrial systems

The exploitation of multicast technologies leads to an improvement in both the performance and scalability of some distributed applications. Applications needing reliable transference of data in long-lived sessions from one source to multiple receivers are typical in industrial automation. This paper describes a multicast transport protocol designed according to such needs and implemented with good results in a SCADA system. The authors addressed reliability using a NACK-based approach and implemented flow and congestion control based on destination set grouping in order to achieve fairness in the treatment of all receivers even when a link or a host becomes congested.