A multicast transport protocol for cooperative media distribution

This paper describes the main ideas of DRMTP (Distributed Real-time Multicast Transport Protocol), an adaptive application-level protocol which allows cooperative multicast of real-time streams. Our protocol is designed for peer-to-peer operation, where multiple sources residing on end-user machines may be present in the network, and is based on a dynamic stream aggregation and congestion control scheme. The protocol solves the problem of network asymmetry that plagues residential broadband networks and allows for fast fail-over and adaptation to departure of source nodes, mitigating the reliability and upstream capacity problems of end-user nodes. Coupled with traffic localization, stream patching, and TCP-friendly congestion control, we design a protocol that enables scalable soft real-time media distribution in a completely decentralised, serverless fashion.