Abstract
Tree-based overlay multicast is an effective group communication method for media streaming applications. However, a group member’s departure causes all of its descendants to be disconnected from the multicast tree for some time, which results in poor performance. The above problem is difficult to be addressed because overlay multicast tree is intrinsically instable. In this paper, we proposed a novel stability enhancing solution, VMCast, for tree-based overlay multicast. This solution uses two types of on-demand cloud virtual machines (VMs), i.e., multicast VMs (MVMs) and compensation VMs (CVMs). MVMs are used to disseminate the multicast data, whereas CVMs are used to offer streaming compensation. The used VMs in the same cloud datacenter constitute a VM cluster. Each VM cluster is responsible for a service domain (VMSD), and each group member belongs to a specific VMSD. The data source delivers the multicast data to MVMs through a reliable path, and MVMs further disseminate the data to group members along domain overlay multicast trees. The above approach structurally improves the stability of the overlay multicast tree. We further utilized CVM-based streaming compensation to enhance the stability of the data distribution in the VMSDs. VMCast can be used as an extension to existing tree-based overlay multicast solutions, to provide better services for media streaming applications. We applied VMCast to two application instances (i.e., HMTP and HCcast). The results show that it can obviously enhance the stability of the data distribution.
Highlights
Multicast is an ideal group communication method for media streaming applications
Each virtual machines (VMs) cluster is responsible for a service domain, called VMSD, and each group member belongs to a specific VMSD
VMCast can be used as an extension to existing tree-based overlay multicast solutions, to provide better services for media streaming applications
Summary
Multicast is an ideal group communication method for media streaming applications. Existing multicast solutions can be divided into two main categories, i.e., IP multicast and overlay multicast ( called application layer multicast). Overlay multicast implements multicast functionality at the application layer, which overcomes some drawbacks (e.g., heavily depending on the support of multicast routers [1]) of IP multicast. Overlay multicast has been widely researched, and can be classified into mesh-based or tree-based solutions. Tree-based overlay multicast solutions [2,3,4,5] usually organize participating peers (group members) into one or more multicast trees, and disseminate the multicast data along these trees.
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