A congestion control model for multicast overlay networks and its performance
Guillaume Urvoy-Keller · 2002
We propose a new TCP-friendly Multicast Congestion Control (MCC) model for overlay networks and study its performance in terms of throughput. We assume that the multicast distribution tree is built at the application level and that each overlay network node has a limited bu#er for packet storage. The overlay MCC decomposes the feedback loop between receivers and sender into a chain of control loops, one for each branch of the multicast distribution tree. To calculate the throughput of a multicast session, we use a linear recurrence method based on the max-plus algebra. Preliminary numerical results demonstrate that the throughput performance of overlay MCC is almost independent of the number of receivers, while for the end-toend MCC, the throughput decreases logarithmically with the number of receivers. This result is a clear indication that overlay networks for multicast distribution o#er a major performance advantage over native end-to-end multicast distribution.