A Middleware for Implementation and Evaluation of Application Layer Multicast Protocols in Real Environments

In this paper, we propose a new middleware, which supports implementation and evaluation of Application Layer Multicast (ALM in short) protocols in real environments. The middleware provides many functions by which it can largely reduce the time and effort required for ALM protocol prototyping, performance evaluation and tuning. By using those functionalities, we have easily implemented several well-known application layer protocols and successfully performed their performance comparison in real environments. As an example, we have implemented ALMI, NARADA, NICE and OMNI as ALM protocols, and compared their performance on PlanetLab. We believe that this is the first effort made to develop this kind of ALM supporting middleware.