Appropriate and robust reliable multicast transport techniques for satellite networks experiencing persistent link fades

• Main Author: Koyabe, Martin W.
• Published: University of Aberdeen 2003
• Subjects: 004; Communication systems & telecommunications
• Online Access: http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.274816

Over the last decade, the Internet has been experiencing an exponential growth in multimedia (i.e. voice and video) and bulk data traffic mainly generated by IP multicast applications. This surge in IP multicast traffic has led to a growing belief among many network infrastructure experts, that the current Internet should widely support IP multicast as a core transport service for both multimedia and bulk data traffic. IP multicast enables efficient use of bandwidth and scales to large groups of receivers (i.e. overheads at the source, per transport stream, remains constant with increasing number of receivers); which makes it an ideal transport service for alleviating congestion and minimising bandwidth usage over the current Internet infrastructure. This work, considers the use of next generation broadband satellite networks as a future complementary solution, for large-scale deployment of reliable IP multicast services over the present Internet infrastructure. It examines how different classes of reliable multicast transport techniques (suited for deployment over satellite networks) perform over link channels experiencing fades/outages similar to next generation satellite links. It then demonstrates how reliable multicast transport protocol techniques; can be optimised over next generation satellite networks. Based on experience gained in conducting benchmark experiments and performance analysis of a set of reliable multicast protocol techniques over varying link conditions, such as high loss rate (significantly due to persistent link fades) and propagation delay. Design specification and implementation of an optimised reliable multicast transport protocol, Satellite Reliable Multicast Transport Protocol (SAT-RMTP), suited for hybrid terrestrial-satellite network, has been presented. Analysis of SAT-RMTP performance over both terrestrial and satellite networks has been conducted and compared with similar protocols currently being proposed for standardisation in the IETF.