Multicast error control for multimedia collaborative applications

This paper investigates the problem of multicast error control in heterogeneous environments for multimedia collaborative applications. Typically, these applications consist of several components such as audio, video, and shared applications. Each of these components has its error control demands that may be different from other components. In a heterogeneous environment, destinations experience different error patterns. Directing error control transmissions to all multicast group members wastes the resources of the unaffected destinations. A technique to overcome this problem is to use multiple multicast groups to deliver error control transmissions only to the affected destinations. This technique places an overhead on the network in maintaining the delivery trees for the extra groups. This paper investigates utilizing multiple groups to control errors in multicast communication and presents a simulation study to evaluate the impact of these groups over the network; an important factor that has been ignored by previous studies.