Multipoint synchronization protocol

Distributed media synchronization is of ever increasing importance in the wake of an exponentially growing number of networked devices, media on demand, and user interactivity. Many protocols have been proposed to synchronize delivery of multimedia data among user groups spread over a packet network. These protocols typically focus on multimedia synchronization in small groups, may not support multimedia sessions with multiparty turn-taking patterns, are often application-specific, and do not perform well with varying network topologies. We describe the multipoint synchronization protocol (MSP) as a time coordinating mechanism that works well in a variety of group settings and for a variety of applications and network conditions, using multicast support if available. MSP is fully distributed and designed to scale to large user groups supporting turn-taking or concurrent sending and receiving. It has no central point of failure and can synchronize concurrent media streams over best-effort packet delivery networks in the absence of a global physical clock.