Summary: Flow Control for Many­to­Many Multicast: A Cost­Benefit
Approach
Yair Amir, Baruch Awerbuch, Claudiu Danilov, Jonathan Stanton
Department of Computer Science
The Johns Hopkins University
Baltimore, MD 21218 USA
fyairamir, baruch, claudiu, jonathang@cs.jhu.edu
Technical Report
CNDS­2001­1
http://www.cnds.jhu.edu
February 28, 2001
Abstract
Flow control, especially in multicast networks, is a problem of significant theoretical and practi­
cal interest. We present a protocol that is analytically grounded, yet also achieves real world goals,
such as simplicity, fairness and minimal resource usage. We base our flow control protocol on the
Cost­Benefit algorithmic framework for resource management. We base decisions on the ''oppor­
tunity'' costs of network resources, comparing the cost of each individual resource to the benefit it
provides. As opposed to existing window­based flow control schemes, we avoid end­to­end feedback
by basing decisions on the state of the links between participating nodes. This produces control traffic
proportional only to the number of overlay network links and independent of the number of groups.

Source: Amir, Yair - Department of Computer Science, Johns Hopkins University

Collections: Computer Technologies and Information Sciences