THE IMPACT OF ROUTING ON MULTICAST ERROR RECOVERY

We investigate the relationship between multicast routing algorithms a nd reliable multicast communication. To capture the impact of the mult icast tree topology onto reliable multicast, we consider two performan ce measures, namely the probability mass function of successful recept ions and the expected number of retransmissions needed to deliver a pa cket successfully from the source to all receivers. Since the expected number of retransmissions is computationally expensive we also give a tight approximation. We finally evaluate the impact of routing algori thms on the performance of reliable multicast transmission and propose a realistic generic model for a multicast tree. (C) 1998 Elsevier Sci ence B.V.