RFC 2887 (rfc2887) - Page 2 of 22

The Reliable Multicast Design Space for Bulk Data Transfer

RFC 2887     Multicast Design Space for Bulk Data Transfer   August 2000


   constraints necessary for the forms of congestion control we
   currently understand.  The purpose of this review is to gather
   together an overview of the field and to make explicit the
   constraints imposed by particular mechanisms. The aim is to provide
   guidance to the standardization process for protocols and protocol
   building blocks.  In doing this, we cluster potential solutions into
   a number of loose categories - real protocols may be composed of
   mechanisms from more than one of these clusters.

   The main constraint on solutions is imposed by the need to scale to
   large receiver sets.  For small receiver sets the design space is
   much less restricted.

2.  Application Constraints

   Application requirements for reliable multicast (RM) are as broad and
   varied as the applications themselves.  However, there are a set of
   requirements that significantly affect the design of an RM protocol.
   A brief list includes:

   o  Does the application need to know that everyone received the data?

   o  Does the application need to constrain differences between
      receivers?

   o  Does the application need to scale to large numbers of receivers?

   o  Does the application need to be totally reliable?

   o  Does the application need ordered data?

   o  Does the application need to provide low-delay delivery?

   o  Does the application need to provide time-bounded delivery?

   o  Does the application need many interacting senders?

   o  Is the application data flow intermittent?

   o  Does the application need to work in the public Internet?

   o  Does the application need to work without a return path (e.g.
      satellite)?

   o  Does the application need to provide secure delivery?






Handley, et al.              Informational