Multicast Congestion Control Mechanism Research Articles

A Single-Rate Multicast Congestion Control (SRMCC) Mechanism in Information-Centric Networking

Information-centric networking (ICN) is expected to be a candidate for future internet architecture, and it supports features such as multicast that improves bandwidth utilization and transmission efficiency. However, multicast itself does not provide congestion control. When multiple multicast groups coexist, multicast traffic may exhaust all network resources, and cause network congestion and packet loss. Additionally, traditional IP multicast congestion control mechanisms cannot be directly applied to ICN architecture. Therefore, it is necessary to consider an effective congestion control mechanism for ICN multicast. This paper proposes a single-rate multicast congestion control mechanism, called SRMCC. It supports router-assisted awareness of the network congestion state and congestion control message aggregation. Moreover, the fair shared rate estimation method is innovatively proposed to achieve protocol fairness. Most importantly, it adjusts the rate according to different congestion states indicated by the queue occupancy ratio. By introducing a rate selection factor, it can achieve a balance between packet loss rate and throughput. Experimental results show that our proposal outperforms other mechanisms in throughput, packet loss rate, total bandwidth utilization, and overhead, and achieves protocol fairness and better TCP friendliness.

TFMCC versus ASMP: lessons learned from performance evaluation

In this article we present a simulation-based comparison of one of the best-known multicast congestion control schemes—TCP-friendly Multicast Congestion Control (TFMCC)—against our proposed Adaptive Smooth Multicast Protocol (ASMP). ASMP consists of a single-rate multicast congestion control mechanism which takes advantage of the RTCP Sender (SR) and Receiver Reports (RR) in order to adjust the sender's transmission rate in respect of the network conditions. The innovation in ASMP lays in the ‘smooth’ transmission rate, which is TCP-friendly and prevents oscillations. We use an integrated simulation environment named Multi-Evalvid-RA for the evaluation of the two congestion control schemes. Multi-Evalvid-RA provides all the necessary tools to perform simulation studies and assess video quality by using both network-centric metrics along with video quality measurements. Performance evaluation results show that ASMP is a very efficient solution for rate-adaptive multimedia applications and a serious competitor to well-known TFMCC. Copyright © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. (Uncontrolled video transmission without any flow/congestion control mechanisms should be avoided as it leads to poor-quality service due to packet losses. Therefore, moderate transmission rates that satisfy the video application requirements are preferable to avoid packet losses. Otherwise, error resilience mechanisms should be applied to recover from losses, especially from I-frames that cannot be recovered by the video decoders. More efficient video encoding techniques along with error resilience and higher access capacity are the key elements for increasing video quality.)

A Congestion Control Algorithm for Layered Multicast Based on Differentiated Services

Effective multicast congestion control mechanism is urgently needed with the deployment of multimedia multicast application in Internet. Layered multicast is considered to be an efficient approach to cope with the network heterogeneity. A Differentiated Services (DiffServ)-based layered multicast model is presented firstly. Then a congestion control algorithm for DiffServ-based layered multicast, called DSLMCC (DiffServ-based layered multicast packet dropping), including DSLMPM (DiffServ-based layered multicast packet marking) and DSLMPD (DiffServ-based layered multicast packet dropping) algorithm, is proposed through introducing probability-based priority packet marking and dropping mechanisms. Simulation results show that DSLMCC algorithm is more responsive, more stable and fair, and can adapt to network heterogeneity better.

A novel packet-pair-based inferring bandwidth congestion control mechanism for layered multicast

Layered transmission of data is the generally recommended solution to the problem of varying bandwidth constraints and heterogeneity in multicast applications. In this paper, we describe a new multicast congestion control mechanism for layered multicast (PLMCC), which is based on packet-pair inferring bandwidth. In PLMCC, intermediate nodes and receivers infer local available bandwidth accurately and quickly using hop-by-hop downward packet-pair. Compared with PLM introduced by Legout et al., PLMCC eliminates the problem associated with large Internet group management protocol (IGMP) leave latencies, it has faster convergence speed. Moreover, our simulation results show that PLMCC is also TCP-friendly and scalable.

Extending equation-based congestion control to multicast applications

In this paper we introduce TFMCC, an equation-based multicast congestion control mechanism that extends the TCP-friendly TFRC protocol from the unicast to the multicast domain. The key challenges in the design of TFMCC lie in scalable round-trip time measurements, appropriate feedback suppression, and in ensuring that feedback delays in the control loop do not adversely affect fairness towards competing flows. A major contribution is the feedback mechanism, the key component of end-to-end multicast congestion control schemes. We improve upon the well-known approach of using exponentially weighted random timers by biasing feedback in favor of low-rate receivers while still preventing a response implosion. We evaluate the design using simulation, and demonstrate that TFMCC is both TCP-friendly and scales well to multicast groups with thousands of receivers. We also investigate TFMCC's weaknesses and scaling limits to provide guidance as to application domains for which it is well suited.