Reliable multicast with delay guarantees

The reliable multicast protocol guarantees that all receivers place the source messages in the same order. We have changed this protocol from an event-driven protocol to a timed protocol in order to also guarantee that all of the receivers have a source message by a deadline. Certain of the control messages that are transmitted by the receivers in this protocol are scheduled to occur at specified times, rather than responding to other messages. This results in short sequences of protocol states that are independent of one another, rather than a protocol machine that is recursive and runs indefinitely. It is easier to prove the properties of these short sequences of events than to prove those of many protocols that have indefinitely long sequences.