Tunable Multicast Protocol

Overview

The Tunable Multicast Protocol was developed in the spring of 1996 in order to produce a reusable tool for the research group to use for developing MBone Applications that require reliability. The protocol is a receiver-initiated that performs NACK implosion avoidance using the slotting and damping techniques from XTP and later used in the SRM protocol from LBL. We have implemented the protocol using the basic RTP packet formats and have exploited the control protocols used the RTCP sender and receiver reports to achieve reliability.

TMP is extremely flexible to the needs of applications including:

• Single Source Ordering or Unordered Delivery
• Total or Partial Buffering for Session Persistance
• Multithreaded recovery of Lost Data
• Token Bucket Flow Control for Data and Control

The protocol is currently implemented for Windows95 and NT.