Multicast communications in the distributed system T-Shoshin

A multicast communication model is developed which fits well into the client-server environment supported by the distributed system T-Shoshin. It is based on a multicast datagram service model and provides minimum reliability in delivering the group message. Therefore, it leaves room for the upper layers to develop their own reliability measures. The model is also flexible in that it allows two types of group send: blocking and nonblocking. An implementation model is described to show that the semantic model can be implemented in a simple and systematic way.<>