Why Multicast Protocols (Don't) Scale: An Analysis of Multipoint Algorithms for Scalable Group Communication

摘要

With the exponential growth of the Internet, there is a critical need to design efficient, scalable and robust protocols to support the network infrastructure. A new class of protocols has emerged to address these challenges, and these protocols rely on a few key techniques, or micro- algorithms, to achieve scalability. By scalability, we mean the ability of groups of communicating processes to grow very large in size. We study the behavior of several of these fundamental techniques that appear in many deployed and emerging Internet standards: Suppression, Announce-Listen, and Leader Election. These algorithms are based on the principle of efficient multipoint communication, often in combination with periodic messaging. We assume a loosely-coupled communication model, where acknowledged messaging among groups of processes is not required. Thus, processes infer information from the periodic receipt or loss of messages from other processes.