A multiple shared trees approach for application layer multicasting

The data delivery mechanisms used for the many-to-many multicast applications have been based on two extreme approaches: a single shared tree and source rooted trees. These two approaches complement each other in terms of performance, protocol overhead and robustness. In this paper, we propose and evaluate a multiple shared trees protocol for application layer multicasting. The protocol constructs an application layer overlay with m data delivery trees, where m>1 and m ≪ the number of data sources. Our simulation results reveal that the multiple shared trees design is a promising application layer overlay construction technique.