Multicast middleware for performance and topology analysis of multimedia grids

Since multicast reduces bandwidth consumption in multimedia grid computing, the middleware for monitoring the performance and topology of multicast communications is important to the design and management of multimedia grid applications. However, the current middleware technologies for multicast performance monitoring are still far from attaining the level of maturity and there lacks consistent approaches to obtain the evaluation data for multicast. In this study, to serve a clear guide for the design and implementation of the multicast middleware, two algorithms are developed for organising all constituents in multicast communications and analysing the multicast performance in two topologies – ‘multicast distribution tree’ and ‘clusters distribution’, and a definitive set of corresponding metrics that are comprehensive yet viable for evaluating multicast communications are also presented. Instead of using the inference data from unicast measurements, in the proposed middleware, the measuring data of multicast traffic are obtained directly from multicast protocols in real time. Moreover, this study makes a middleware implementation which is integrated into a real access grid multicast communication infrastructure. The results of the implementation demonstrate the substantial improvements in the accuracy and real time in evaluating the performance and topology of multicast network.