Dynamic Layer Multicast Congestion Control

Multicast is a routing protocol that allows broadcast of internet data from one sender to multiple receivers. This requires a congestion control protocol that will determine the appropriate rate for each of the recipients of the data stream. Multicast is currently implemented in a way that requires a large latency for a client to leave a multicast session. This long latency hinders existing congestion control protocols by lengthening their reaction time in the face of congestion. This thesis reports on joint work done on a protocol which uses dynamic layers, which make the reactivity of the protocol independent of the leave latency.
The original parts of this thesis are the experimental results and the analysis of the algorithm. The protocol, called Dynamic Layer Congestion Control (DLCC), is responsive to dynamically changing network conditions and scalable to a large number of receivers. It requires no receiver-to-receiver coordination, and can be made to compete fairly against TCP flows. Experimental simulations illustrate its behavior, and show how it can be tuned empirically to compete fairly against TCP sessions.