Log-based receiver-reliable multicast for distributed interactive simulation

Abstract

Reliable multicast communication is important in large-scale distributed applications. For example, reliable multicast is used to transmit terrain and environmental updates in distributed simulations. To date, proposed protocols have not supported these applications' requirements, which include wide-area data distribution, low-latency packet loss detection and recovery, and minimal data and management over-head within fine-grained multicast groups, each containing a single data source.In this paper, we introduce the notion of Log-Based Receiver-reliable Multicast (LBRM) communication, and we describe and evaluate a collection of log-based receiver reliable multicast optimizations that provide an efficient, scalable protocol for high-performance simulation applications. We argue that these techniques provide value to a broader range of applications and that the receiver-reliable model is an appropriate one for communication in general.