PROVIDING SCALABLE WEB SERVICES USING MULTICAST COMMUNICATION

The recent growth in use of the World-Wide Web in the Internet has cau sed a significant increase in the demand placed on Web servers. This i ncreased load results in noticeably longer response times for users. W e propose an approach to using multicast in the delivery of Web resour ces that reduces the load on servers as well as the networks that conn ect them. We analyze the issues involved in using multicast in the Web , especially those related to routing and addressing, and present an a lternative approach to multicast routing that is appropriate for this application. We also describe the design and implementation of a syste m based on the existing WWW client and server architecture and the mul ticast support provided within IF. Experimental results from this impl ementation are presented. (C) 1997 Published by Elsevier Science B.V.