Multicast-based inference of network-internal loss characteristics

Robust measurements of network dynamics are increasingly important to the design and operation of large internetworks like the Internet. However, administrative diversity makes it impractical to monitor every link on an end-to-end path. At the same time, it is difficult to determine the performance characteristics of individual links from end-to-end measurements of unicast traffic. In this paper, we introduce the use of end-to-end measurements of multicast traffic to infer network-internal characteristics. The bandwidth efficiency of multicast traffic makes it suitable for large-scale measurements of both end-to-end and internal network dynamics. We develop a maximum-likelihood estimator for loss rates on internal links based on losses observed by multicast receivers. It exploits the inherent correlation between such observations to infer the performance of paths between branch points in the tree spanning a multicast source and its receivers. We derive its rate of convergence as the number of measurements increases, and we establish robustness with respect to certain generalizations of the underlying model. We validate these techniques through simulation and discuss possible extensions and applications of this work     

Scalable reliable multicast using multiple multicast channels

We examine an approach for providing reliable, scalable multicast communication, involving the use of multiple multicast channels for reducing receiver processing costs and reducing network bandwidth consumption in a multicast session. In this approach a single multicast channel is used for the original transmission of packets. Retransmissions of packets are done on separate multicast channels, which receivers dynamically join and leave. We first show that protocols using an infinite number of multicast channels incur much less processing overhead at the receivers compared to protocols that use only a single multicast channel. This is due to the fact that receivers do not receive retransmissions of packets they have already received correctly. Next, we derive the number of unwanted redundant packets at a receiver due to using only a finite number of multicast channels, for a specific negative acknowledgment (NAK)-based protocol. We then explore the minimum number of multicast channels required to keep the cost of processing unwanted packets to a sufficiently low value. For an application consisting of a single sender transmitting reliably to many receivers we find that only a small number of multicast channels are required for a wide range of system parameters. In the case of an application where all participants simultaneously act as both senders and receivers a moderate number of multicast channels is needed. Finally, we present two mechanisms for implementing multiple multicast channels, one using multiple IP multicast groups and the other using additional router support for selective packet forwarding. We discuss the impact of both mechanisms on performance in terms of end-host and network resources     

Traffic performance evaluation of an optical packet switch with multicast operation

We recently proposed a multicast-enabled optical packet switch architecture utilizing multicast modules. In this paper, we evaluate the traffic performance of our earlier proposed packet switch under a hybrid traffic model through simulations. The multicast packets are given higher priority than unicast packets so that only a small number of multicast modules are needed. The results show that the switch can achieve an acceptable packet loss probability in conjunction with a packet scheduling technique.     

Multicast-based inference of network-internal delay distributions

Packet delay greatly influences the overall performance of network applications. It is therefore important to identify causes and locations of delay performance degradation within a network. Existing techniques, largely based on end-to-end delay measurements of unicast traffic, are well suited to monitor and characterize the behavior of particular end-to-end paths. Within these approaches, however, it is not clear how to apportion the variable component of end-to-end delay as queueing delay at each link along a path. Moreover, there are issues of scalability for large networks. In this paper, we show how end-to-end measurements of multicast traffic can be used to infer the packet delay distribution and utilization on each link of a logical multicast tree. The idea, recently introduced in Caceres et al. (1999), is to exploit the inherent correlation between multicast observations to infer performance of paths between branch points in a tree spanning a multicast source and its receivers. The method does not depend on cooperation from intervening network elements; because of the bandwidth efficiency of multicast traffic, it is suitable for large-scale measurements of both end-to-end and internal network dynamics. We establish desirable statistical properties of the estimator, namely consistency and asymptotic normality. We evaluate the estimator through simulation and observe that it is robust with respect to moderate violations of the underlying model.     

A Weighted Scheduling Mechanism to Reduce Multicast Packet Loss in IPTV Service over EPON

This letter proposes a weighted scheduling mechanism for Internet protocol television (IPTV) to improve the loss performance of multicast transmission over an Ethernet passive optical network (EPON). We propose a new weight policy from the number of multicast receivers to proportionally allocate the downstream bandwidth of IPTV traffic. The proposed mechanism is used in an optical line terminal to decrease lost packets of favorite IPTV services because the lost multicast packets are proportional to the number of receivers. The total proportion of lost multicast packets is reduced by up to 73% in an EPON.     

RT Oblivious Erasure Correcting

An erasure correcting scheme is rateless if it is designed to tolerate any pattern of packet loss and reveal the transmitted information after a certain number of packets is received. On the one hand, transmission schemes that use rateless erasure correcting schemes do not usually use a feedback channel. However, they may require significant amount of additional processing by both the sender and the receiver. On the other hand, automatic repeated request protocols use a feedback channel to assist the sender, and do not usually require information processing. In this work we present a combined approach, where a lean feedback channel is used to assist the sender to efficiently transmit the information. Our Real-Time oblivious approach minimizes the processing time and the memory requirements of the receiver and, therefore, fits a variety of receiving devices. In addition, the transmission is real-time where the expected number of original packets revealed when a packet is received is approximately the same throughout the entire transmission process. We use our end-to-end scheme as a base for broadcast (and multicast) schemes. An overlay tree structure is used to convey the information to a large number of receivers. Moreover, the receivers may download the information from a number of senders or even migrate from one sender to another.     

Reliable Multicast in Multi-Access Wireless LANs

Multicast is an efficient paradigm for transmitting data from a sender to a group of receivers. In this paper, we focus on multicast in single channel multi-access wireless local area networks (LANs) comprising several small cells. In such a system, a receiver cannot correctly receive a packet if two or more packets are sent to it at the same time, because the packets collide. Therefore, one has to ensure that only one node sends at a time. We look at two important issues. First, we consider the problem of the sender acquiring the multi-access channel for multicast transmission. Second, for reliable multicast in each cell of the wireless LAN, we examine ARQ-based approaches. The second issue is important because the wireless link error rates can be very high.We present a new approach to overcome the problem of feedback collision in single channel multi-access wireless LANs, both for the purpose of acquiring the channel and for reliability. Our approach involves the election of one of the multicast group members (receivers) as a leader or representative for the purpose of sending feedback to the sender. For reliable multicast, on erroneous reception of a packet, the leader does not send an acknowledgment, prompting a retransmission. On erroneous reception of the packet at receivers other than the leader, our protocol allows negative acknowledgments from these receivers to collide with the acknowledgment from the leader, thus destroying the acknowledgment and prompting the sender to retransmit the packet.Using analytical models, we demonstrate that the leader-based protocol exhibits higher throughput in comparison to two other protocols which use traditional delayed feedback-based probabilistic methods. Last, we present a simple scheme for leader election.     

Multicast topology inference from measured end-to-end loss

The use of multicast inference on end-to-end measurement has been proposed as a means to infer network internal characteristics such as packet link loss rate and delay. We propose three types of algorithm that use loss measurements to infer the underlying multicast topology: (i) a grouping estimator that exploits the monotonicity of loss rates with increasing path length; (ii) a maximum-likelihood estimator (MLE); and (iii) a Bayesian estimator. We establish their consistency, compare their complexity and accuracy, and analyze the modes of failure and their asymptotic probabilities     

The core-assisted mesh protocol

The core-assisted mesh protocol (CAMP) is introduced for multicast routing in ad hoc networks. CAMP generalizes the notion of core-based trees introduced for internet multicasting into multicast meshes that have much richer connectivity than trees. A shared multicast mesh is defined for each multicast group; the main goal of using such meshes is to maintain the connectivity of multicast groups even while network routers move frequently, CAMP consists of the maintenance of multicast meshes and loop-free packet forwarding over such meshes. Within the multicast mesh of a group, packets from any source in the group are forwarded along the reverse shortest path to the source, just as in traditional multicast protocols based on source-based trees. CAMP guarantees that within a finite time, every receiver of a multicast group has a reverse shortest path to each source of the multicast group. Multicast packets for a group are forwarded along the shortest paths front sources to receivers defined within the group's mesh. CAMP uses cores only to limit the traffic needed for a router to join a multicast group; the failure of cores does not stop packet forwarding or the process of maintaining the multicast meshes     

Performance analysis of a random packet selection policy formulticast switching

This paper studies a random packet selection policy for multicast switching. An input packet generates a fixed number of primary copies plus a random number of secondary copies. Assuming a constant number of contending packets during a slot, the system is modeled as a discrete time birth process. A difference equation describing the dynamics of this process is derived, the solution of which gives a closed form expression for the distribution of the number of packets chosen. Then this result is extended to the steady state distribution through a Markov chain analysis. It is shown that the old packets have larger fanout than the fresh packets and the copy distribution of the mixed packets is determined. The packet and copy throughput taking into account the old packets have been obtained. We determined the mean packet delay as well as an upperbound for packet loss probabilities for finite buffer sizes. The asymptotic distribution of the number of packets is also given for large switch sizes under saturation by applying results from the renewal theory. Finally, simulations are done to determine the performance of the switch under mixed (unicast plus multicast) traffic     

Multicast-based loss inference with missing data

Network tomography using multicast probes enables inference of loss characteristics of internal network links from reports of end-to-end loss seen at multicast receivers. We develop estimators for internal loss rates when reports are not available on all probes or from all receivers. This problem is motivated by the use of unreliable transport protocols, such as reliable transport protocol, to transmit loss reports to a collector for inference. We use a maximum-likelihood (ML) approach in which we apply the expectation maximization (EM) algorithm to provide an approximating solution to the the ML estimator for the incomplete data problem. We present a concrete realization of the algorithm that can be applied to measured data. For classes of models, we establish identifiability of the probe and report loss parameters, and convergence of the EM sequence to the maximum-likelihood estimator (MLE). Numerical results suggest that these properties hold more generally. We derive convergence rates for the EM iterates, and the estimation error of the MLE. Finally, we evaluate the accuracy and convergence rate through extensive simulations     

Loss probabilities for messages with redundant packets feeding afinite buffer

The purpose of this paper is to obtain the distribution of the number of lost packets within a sequence of n consecutive packet arrivals into a finite buffer M/M/1 queue. We obtain explicit expressions for the multidimensional generating function of these probabilities based on a recursive scheme introduced by Cidon et al. (1993). We then analyze the loss probabilities of a whole message, and analyze the effect of adding redundant packets. We show that in both heavy traffic as well as in light traffic conditions, adding redundant packets results in decreasing the message loss probabilities     

一种新的基于虚拟队列的无线多播网络编码调度策略

网络编码由于其传输效率高的特性,近年来在无线多播网络中得到广泛的应用。针对无线多播网络中丢包自动重传效率低的问题,该文提出一种新的基于虚拟队列中数据包到达时间的编码调度策略(CSAT)。在CSAT策略中,为了提高编码效率,采用虚拟队列来存放初始以及未被所有接收者接收到的数据包。考虑到队列的稳定性,CSAT策略按照一定的比率从主次队列选择发送;在次队列发送数据包时,结合了编码和非编码两种方式,根据数据包到达队列的先后,选取能够使较多数据包参与编码的方式发送。仿真结果表明,该文所提的CSAT编码调度策略在有效提高了数据包传输效率的同时,提高了网络的吞吐量并降低了平均等待时延。     

Wide-area IP multicast traffic characterization

IP multicast is gaining acceptance among service providers as the protocols and infrastructure mature. However, characteristics of multicast traffic remain poorly understood. Using passive OC-12 monitors, we observed multicast traffic on links connecting aggregated customers and peer networks to our native multicast backbone network. We first refined existing traffic flow profiling methodologies via an exploration of temporal differences in multicast packet trains. Based on this framework, we collected multicast flow traces from four geographically dispersed nodes in the Worldcom vBNS network over a one-month period. We present multicast-specific traffic characteristics including packet and flow sizes, fragmentation, sources per group, and address space distribution. Analysis reveals results contrary to prevailing wisdom, including a preponderance of single-packet flows; a highly variable packet size distribution, with many large packets and strong modes; the existence of fragmented multicast traffic; and an insignificant number of simultaneous multiple-source groups. Based on our analysis, we recommend policies for deployment and improvements to protocol implementations.     

Time‐varying network link loss rate tracking from unicast end‐to‐end measurements

Time‐varying network link loss rate is a useful information for network managers to discover and locate the network link failures. This paper proposes a method to track time‐varying network link loss rates from unicast end‐to‐end measurements. The method first trains a state transition matrix to capture the spatio‐temporal characters of packet link transmission probabilities by sending end‐to‐end probe packets and then estimates the time‐varying link loss rates using the state transition matrix and the end‐to‐end measurements obtained from background traffic (the existed packets in network). We also introduce a validation step to check and retrain the state transition matrix in order to ensure the accuracy of the state transition matrix. Our method is capable of tracking the variation of link loss rates without incessantly sending probe packets, which is very feasible for many practical applications. The ns‐2 simulation results show the good performance of our method.     

Packet sequencing: a deterministic protocol for QoS in IP networks

We describe a deterministic protocol for routing delay and loss-sensitive traffic through an IP network. Unlike traditional approaches, the method described here - packet sequencing - does not rely on queue management. Instead, it uses a temporally-based deterministic protocol to coordinate and switch IP packets on a systemwide basis. As a result, end-to-end throughput is guaranteed, without packet loss, loss variance, or accumulated performance impairment; additionally, end-to-end delay is minimized, and jitter is essentially eliminated. We also show that packet sequencing can complement conventional IP networks: sequencing does not negate the use of queue management QoS methods that are the subject of considerable ongoing study. This article describes the fundamental approach, issues associated with scalability, illustrative performance in the context of storage networking, and attributes related to the security and reliability of IP networks.     

Erasure coding for reliable adaptive retransmission in wireless broadcast/multicast systems

In this paper, we present new adaptive automatic repeat request (ARQ) schemes for wireless broadcast/multicast combining erasure coding (EC) and packet retransmission. Traditional approaches rely on retransmitting the lost packets in a point-to-point or point-to-multipoint mode. The main idea behind the presented protocols is to retransmit adaptive combinations of the lost packets using EC, which can help several receivers to recover the lost information with fewer retransmission attempts. We propose two versions of EC-based ARQ protocols, and investigate theoretically the corresponding transmission bandwidths in different contexts. We show through simulation results the efficiency of the proposed protocols with respect to conventional ARQ strategies and new published ARQ works for broadcast/multicast. Finally, a new sliding window NACK feedback policy is presented for the case of a high number of receivers to avoid the feedback implosion problem.     

Parity-based loss recovery for reliable multicast transmission

We investigate how forward error correction (FEC) can be combined with automatic repeat request (ARQ) to achieve scalable reliable multicast transmission. We consider the two scenarios where FEC is introduced as a transparent layer underneath a reliable multicast layer that uses ARQ, and where FEC and ARQ are both integrated into a single layer that uses the retransmission of parity data to recover from the loss of original data packets. To evaluate the performance improvements due to FEC, we consider different loss rates and different types of loss behavior (spatially or temporally correlated loss, homogeneous or heterogeneous loss) for up to 10⁶ receivers. Our results show that introducing FEC as a transparent layer below ARQ can improve multicast transmission efficiency and scalability. However, there are substantial additional improvements when FEC and ARQ are integrated     

An efficient mesh‐based multicast routing protocol in mobile ad hoc networks

Mesh‐based multicast routing protocols for mobile ad hoc networks (MANETs) build multiple paths from senders to receivers to deliver packets even in the presence of links breaking. This redundancy results in high reliability/robustness but may significantly increase packet overhead. This paper proposes a mesh‐based multicast protocol, called centered protocol for unified multicasting through announcements (CPUMA), that achieves comparable reliability as existing mesh‐based multicast protocols, however, with significantly much less data overhead. In CPUMA, a distributed core‐selection and maintenance algorithm is used to find the source‐centric center of a shared mesh. We leverage data packets to center the core of each multicast group shared mesh instead of using GPS or any pre‐assignment of cores to groups (the case of existing protocols). The proposed centering scheme allows reducing data packet overhead and creating forwarding paths toward the nearest mesh member instead of the core to reduce latency. We show, via simulations, that CPUMA outperforms existing multicast protocols in terms of data packet overhead, and latency while maintaining a constant or better packet delivery ratio, at the cost of a small increase in control overhead in a few scenarios. Copyright © 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Comparison of FEC types with regard to the efficiency of TCP connections over AWGN satellite channels

Optimizing the end-to-end throughput of a TCP connection (goodput) over geostationary satellite links is a challenging research topic. This is because the high delay-bandwidth product, together with a non-negligible random loss of packets, is a condition that considerably differs from the environments TCP was originally designed for. As a result, TCP performance is significantly impaired by the channel bit error rate. The literature is full of suggestions for improving TCP goodput, most based on modifications of the protocol itself. We only investigated the application of different FEC (forward error correction) types for TCP goodput optimization, leaving the end-to-end protocol unaltered. Using a method midway between analysis and simulation to evaluate the goodput of TCP long-lived connections, we first studied the influence of packet loss rate, introduced by errors on the channel, on the TCP goodput. We showed that, in some cases, the packet loss rate does not need to be negligible with respect to that caused by congestion, as it is widely-held opinion. We then applied physical-level FEC techniques, such as convolutional encoding/Viterbi decoding, Reed Solomon, link-level erasure codes and their combinations, over a wide field of signal to noise conditions of the satellite channel. For each FEC type, we found the FEC rate that maximizes the TCP goodput, in each channel condition. We finally compared the results of all FECs used between them, and presented the case of multiple TCP connections sharing the same link as well