Parallel overlays for high data-rate multicast data transfer

Recently a number of application-layer multicast (ALM) protocols have been proposed as a promising alternative to deploying multicast services in the unicast-only Internet. Current ALM protocols work very well for low data-rate applications but can suffer from link-level load imbalance, and consequently link congestions, when applied to high data-rate applications. This work addresses this problem by extending the well-known NICE protocol to use multiple parallel overlays in the same ALM session to spread the data traffic across more available network links, and thus leading to significantly improved performance. Extensive simulation results show that the proposed protocol can support three times the data-rate compared to NICE and yet can reduce the end-to-end data delivery delay by more than 50%. 2006 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.