MTP-2: Towards Achieving the S.E.R.O. Properties for Multicast Transport

Existing reliable multicast transport protocols have focused on achieving reliability from the point of view of senders of messages. Many applications in the area of synchronous groupware do not need this strong property, but can nonetheless benefit from a reliable multicast protocol. For use with theX window sharingtool Xy, we hav e implemented the multicast transport protocol MTP as described in RFC 1301. Combined with reliable (TCP) unicast connections, MTP turns out to be a relatively good match for the transport requirements ofXy. Based on these experiences, we have designed a successor protocol, which aims to be more generally applicable by achieving Scalability, Efficiency, Robustness, and Ordered delivery of messages.