A multicast synchronization protocol for real time distributed systems

High-speed networks can support real-time multimedia applications. However, the nature of the asynchronous transmission, and the absence of a physical global clock can disrupt the temporal relationships among media units. /spl Delta/-causal ordering is a communication abstraction designed to maintain these temporal relationships within some tolerable bound. The /spl Delta/ value represents the limited lifetime during which a message m can be used by a destination process. In this paper, we develop a new real-time causal ordering protocol, in a distributed system S, where all participants can start to playback, simultaneously, the same media unit. We validate this model by using CPN (colored Petri nets) to obtain a state space graph. The objective is to study the behaviour of this model, by verifying different properties such as boundedness, liveness. The simulation results show that this model respects the real-time causal ordering, in the context of multicast communications.