Collecting and modeling the join/leave behavior of multicast group members in the MBone

One purpose of the MBone is to study the performance of multicast and real time protocol in global conferencing applications. Part of this evaluation is dependent on understanding how the MBone is used and developing realistic workloads and usage models to assist in protocol evaluation. We have developed a tool, called Mlisten, to accurately collect the join/leave times for multicast group members in MBone audio sessions. Using data collected with Mlisten and a set of analysis tools, we report statistics about several MBone audio sessions including member inter arrival times and durations, multicast tree routing information, and group spatial characteristics. Data was also collected and analyzed for all active sessions to produce information about movement among multicast groups.