A Mathematical Model for Evaluating the Performance of Multicast Systems

Abstract

© 2008 IEEE. Reprinted, with permission, from Syed S. Rizvi, Aasia Riasat, and Khaled M. Elleith, "A Mathematical Model for Evaluating the Performance of Multicast Systems," The 1st IEEE International Workshop on IP Multimedia Communications (IPMC 2008) August 4 - 7, 2008, St. Thomas U.S. Virgin IslandsThe Internet is experiencing the demand of high-speed real-time applications, such as live streaming multimedia, videoconferencing, and multiparty games. IP multicast is an efficient transmission technique to support these applications. However, there are several architectural issues in this technique that hinder the development and the deployment of IP multicast such as a lack of an efficient multicast address allocation scheme. On the other hand, End System Multicasting (ESM) is a very promising application-layer scheme where all the multicast functionality is shifted to the end-users. Supporting high-speed real-time applications always demand a sound understanding of these schemes and the factors that might affect the end-user requirements. In this paper we attempt to propose both analytical and the mathematical models for characterizing the performance of IP multicast and ESM. Our proposed mathematical model can be used to design and implement a more efficient and robust ESM model for the future networks