Reliable multicast for the Grid: a case study in experimental computer science

In its simplest form, multicast communication is the process of sending data packets from a source to multiple destinations in the same logical multicast group. IP multicast allows the efficient transport of data through wide-area networks, and its potentially great value for the Grid has been highlighted recently by a number of research groups. In this paper, we focus on the use of IP multicast in Grid applications, which require high-throughput reliable multicast. These include Grid-enabled computational steering and collaborative visualization applications, and wide-area distributed computing. We describe the results of our extensive evaluation studies of state-of-the-art reliable-multicast protocols, which were performed on the UK's high-speed academic networks. Based on these studies, we examine the ability of current reliable multicast technology to meet the Grid's requirements and discuss future directions.