Smooth loss event rate estimation for layered multicast protocol

During congestion, data packets are dropped at the bottleneck link. The pattern of packet drops is determined by the aggregate traffic behavior and the queuing policy of the bottleneck link. An observation shows that under this condition per-flow packet drops are unevenly spaced. Consequently, with the current loss event rate estimation technique, layered multicast protocols experience oscillatory estimated loss event rates. Moreover, the inability of layered multicast protocols to synchronize packet sequence number across multicast layers exaggerates this problem. A two-step loss interval filtering has been proposed to solve the former problem, while the latter can be solved with packet reordering. Combining the two-step filtering and packet reordering, we proposed a smooth loss event rate estimation technique for layered multicast protocol.