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Summary: Developing a Multicast Metric
Robert C. Chalmers, Kevin C. Almeroth
Department of Computer Science
University of California
Santa Barbara, CA 93106-5110
Abstract-- To further advance the deployment of multicast, many con-
sider it necessary to provide a quantitative measure of the potential benefit
of employing multicast rather than unicast. We approach this problem in
three ways. First, we propose a rudimentary metric that can provide a
reasonable measure of the benefit achieved by an active group using mul-
ticast instead of unicast. Second, we discuss many of the issues inherent
in developing multicast metrics and how these issues may be addressed to
improve the accuracy of our model. Third, we consider how characteris-
tics of network topology and group distribution might offer a predictive
estimate for the proposed metric. In general, we identify two rules for
evaluating the efficiency of multicast: (1)multicast efficiency increases as
the average path length increases, and (2)fan-out close to the source de-
creases multicast's efficiency.
I. INTRODUCTION
Advocates for multicast have been struggling to convince
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