Performance comparison of centralized versus distributed error recovery for reliable multicast

We examine the impact of the loss recovery mechanism on the performance of a reliable multicast protocol. Approaches for loss recovery in reliable multicast can be divided into two major classes: centralized (source-based) recovery and distributed recovery. For both classes we consider the state of the art: for centralized recovery, an integrated transport layer scheme using parity multicast for error recovery (hybrid ARQ type 2) as well as timer-based feedback suppression, and for distributed recovery, a scheme with local data multicast retransmission and feedback processing in a local neighborhood. We also evaluate the benefits of combining the two approaches into distributed error recovery (DER) with local retransmissions using a type 2 hybrid ARQ scheme. The schemes are evaluated for up to 10⁶ receivers under different loss scenarios with respect to network bandwidth usage and completion time of a reliable transfer. We show that using DER with type 2 hybrid ARQ gives best performance in terms of bandwidth and latency. For networks, where local retransmission is not possible, we show that a centralized protocol based on type 2 hybrid ARQ comes close to the performance of a protocol with local retransmissions