A throughput analysis of reliable multicast protocols in an active networking environment

Reliable multicast protocols have gained popularity with active services contribution where routers implement additional functionalities. Contributing mainly to feedback implosion problems, retransmission scoping and cache of data, these active protocols open new perspectives for achieving high throughput and low latencies on wide-area networks. We define generic protocols with active services and present a throughput analysis of the various mechanisms proposed in existing protocols, i.e. active reliable multicast (ARM) and active error recovery (AER). The main contribution consists in the analysis of the local recovery facility with different NACK suppression strategies and the potential of the subcast feature. Some insights on dimensioning active networks are also provided.