Multimedia Tools and Applications

, Volume 44, Issue 1, pp 17–37 | Cite as

A hybrid multicast connectivity solution for multi-party collaborative environments

Article
First Online:

Abstract

In multi-party collaborative environments, a group of users can share multiple media streams via IP multicasting. However, despite of the efficiency of IP multicast, it is not widely available and alternative application-layer multicast approaches are introduced. Application-layer multicast is advantageous, however, it incurs additional processing delays. In this paper, we present a new hybrid-style application-layer multicast solution that satisfies both network efficiency and easy deployment. We achieve this goal by connecting multicast islands through UDP tunnels employing UMTP (UDP multicast tunneling protocol). We also design a MPROBE protocol to remove multicast loop among multicast island in real Internet. We verify the feasibility of the proposed solution by implementing a prototype tool, AG Connector, that works on Access Grid multi-party collaborative environment.

Keywords

Application-layer multicast Multicast connectivity UDP multicast tunneling protocol Multicast island Advanced collaboration environment 
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Notes

Acknowledgements

This research was supported by the Ministry of Knowledge Economy, Korea, under the Information Technology Research Center support program supervised by the Institute of Information Technology Advancement (grant number IITA-2009-C1090-0902-0006). We thank the Futures Laboratory and Access Grid team at Argonne National Laboratory and The University of Chicago for their support. Thomas Uram’s and Namgon Kim’s effort has been provided in part by the US. Department of Energy under Contract W-31-109-Eng-38. Also, we would like to appreciate JaeSeung Kwak and JeongHoon Moon at Korea Institute of Science and Technology Information (KISTI) for interesting comments, encouragements, and feedbacks.

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Copyright information

© Springer Science+Business Media, LLC 2009

Authors and Affiliations

  1. 1.GIST Networked Media Lab.GwangjuSouth Korea
  2. 2.Argonne National LaboratoryArgonneUSA

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