Congestion Controlled Anonymous Gossip: A Scalable Method For Providing Probabilistic Gaurantees To Multicast Reliability In Mobile Ad-Hoc Networks.

The use of contention-based Medium Access Control (MAC) protocols combined with hidden terminal problems make ad-hoc networks much more sensitive to load and congestion than wired networks or even wireless cellular networks. In such an environment, multicast reliability cannot be achieved solely by retransmission of lost packets as is typically done in wired networks. In order to achieve multicast reliability in such networks, the authors must consider jointly two components: reliability and congestion control. Many multicast protocols approach the problem of multicast in ad-hoc networks by building and maintaining multicast trees or meshes to establish connectivity among group members. However, these protocols do not attempt to ensure packet delivery and packet loss is a problem during mesh/tree reconfiguration, a frequent repair activity.