PhD ThesisOne of the numerous results of recent developments in communication
networks and distributed systems has been an increased interest in the study
of applications and protocolsfor communications between multiple, as opposed
to single, entities such as processes and computers. For example, in replicated
file storage, a process attempts to store a file on several file servers, rather
than one. MUltiple entity communications, which allow one-to-many and
many-to-one communications, are known as multicast communications.
This thesis examines some of the ways in which the architectures of
computer networks and distributed systems can affect the design and
development of multicast communication applications and protocols.To assist
in this examination, the thesis presents three contributions. First, a set of
classification schemes are developed for use in the description and analysis of
various multicast communication strategies. Second, a general set of
multicast communication primitives are presented, unrelated to any specific
network or distributed system, yet efficiently implementable on a variety of
networks. Third, the primitives are used to obtain experimental results for a
study ofintranetwork and internetwork multicast communications.Postgraduate Scholarship, The Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada:
Overseas Research Student Award:
the Committee of Vice-Chancellors and Principals of the Universities of the
Uni ted Kingdom
