An area-based feedback implosion control mechanism with deterministic timeouts

Reliable multicast applications use feedback messages to report receiving status of receivers. This results in the well-known feedback implosion and scalability problems. Also, quick loss response from receivers and low multicast overhead, e.g. control messages and session messages, are desired. We present a feedback implosion control mechanism that groups the multicast members into areas, with each area having an Area Representative (AR). The AR provides immediate feedback messages and suppresses the superfluous feedback messages from other receivers in its area. The mechanism doesn't need any support from underlying networks except correct multicast packet routing. No network topology or multicast group membership information is needed. Each receiver selects its AR independently; areas are formed or dismissed automatically and dynamically when network situation changes. Preliminary simulation results show that our mechanism has good feedback suppression, fast loss response and is scalable with the group size.