OTERS (on-tree efficient recovery using subcasting): a reliable multicast protocol

This paper presents a reliable multicast protocol (OTERS) that organizes receivers into a fusion tree that matches the multicast delivery tree of the source and uses this tree to fuse NAKs and subcast retransmissions. The protocol requires two extensions to the current Internet network layer, namely multicast route backtracing and subcasting. We argue that these extension are simple, natural and low overhead extensions for the Internet. Simulations of six reliable multicast protocols demonstrate that our approach substantially reduces the recovery latency and the traffic load compared to previously proposed approaches.