The Multimedia Multicasting Problem

This paper explores the problems associated with the multicasting of continuous media to support multimedia group applications. The interaction between multicasting and the delivery of multiple time-correlated continuous-media streams with real-time delay requirements poses various new and interesting problems in research on communication protocols and architectures. The authors describe these problems, and identify where the opportunities are for effective solutions, all in the context of providing an overview of the current state of research in multimedia multicasting. The issues they discuss include quality of service, resource reservations, routing, error and traffic control, heterogeneity, and the use of hierarchical coding and open-loop control techniques.