Multicast communication on the Unison network

Abstract

A multicast access architecture for a multiservice network is described. The system is based on the use of a distributed set of multicast agents which are responsible for regulating access to the service and for effecting the distribution of data. A preliminary implementation of such a multicast service has been made for the Unison network. Measurements of its performance and demonstration of its use in supporting a simple, interactive, multiparty application are reported. The proposed architecture exhibits the potential to support a wide range of applications; to exploit intrinsic multicast properties of particular network segments; to accommodate scaling by the incremental addition of multicast components to the distributed system; and to achieve reduction of traffic through regions of the network prone to congestion by appropriate configuration of multicast components. It is conjectured that the architecture should have general application to any network based on asynchronous transfer mode (ATM) techniques.