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Summary: Efficient Multicast Design in a Microkernel Environment
Concurrency Practice and Experience, 10:7, 497548, 1998
A. Averbuch A. Cohen
Department of Computer Science
School of Mathematical Sciences
Tel Aviv University
Tel Aviv 69978, Israel
Abstract
Multicast has become popular in recent years with the introduction of new, very
fast networks. Existing solutions of the multicast design and implementation problems
are either inefficient in microkernel environments or too expensive in terms of the host
operating system overhead involved. In our search for a new solution we investigate
various aspects of the problem.
Exploring the desired semantics, we come to the conclusion that control functions,
group maintenance algorithms, and various ordering semantics can be implemented on
top of the basic services, and that the efficiency of these implementations is less critical
than that of the basic services.
We describe a few naive solutions to supporting multicast in microkernels and show
their limitations. Then we suggest a new solution to the problem and show analytically
that it is significantly better than other solutions.
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