Traditional broadcast protocols are inappropriate for the high-speed networ
ks of the future. Such protocols are limited by the speed of software proce
ssing, which becomes a bottleneck as network speeds increase. This paper pr
esents broadcast protocols that are appropriate for high-speed networks, an
d are tolerant of failures involving the loss of messages. The protocols ar
e based primarily on the simple hardware functions present in a high-speed
network node. This leads to message delivery at hardware speeds, In the unl
ikely event of a failure, software intervention is required to guarantee th
e timely termination of the protocol; however, this software processing doe
s not interfere with message delivery.