Deploying AL-FEC with Online Algorithms

Application Layer Forward Error Correction (ALFEC) schemes are the most suitable mechanism for error control in mobile multicast services. AL-FEC introduces redundant information in advance with the source data to provide reliability control in the multicast transmission. Due to this fact the introduced redundancy must be carefully selected with respect to the current network conditions to avoid channel bandwidth wastage and achieve an efficient and reliable multicast delivery. However, the efficient selection of the introduced redundancy is not a trivial issue for the multicast source, due to the individual constraints of a multicast environment. In this work, we present a novel way to face the AL-FEC deployment utilizing online algorithms for selecting the appropriate amount of redundancy introduced in the multicast transmission. We provide an efficient way to apply AL-FEC protection on mobile multicast environments with randomized online algorithms eliminating the need for prior knowledge of the network conditions. To this direction, we present a competitive framework under which, we state the problem of the efficient deployment of AL-FEC protection and provide a randomized online algorithm for the AL-FEC application over mobile multicast environments.