Application layer multicast for efficient peer-to-peer applications

Abstract

Application layer multicast (ALM) can be useful for many types of peer-to-peer (P2P) applications. We compare a group of ALM algorithms, that take into account network topology measurements, using Monte-Carlo simulation. A new algorithm, called Fastcast, is introduced. Fastcast allows to control the tradeoff between used traffic and the worst-case length of the application layer path. ALM algorithms for P2P applications can benefit from the possibility of limiting the number of children in the ALM tree, since many nodes could be connected by slow modem connections. We study the impact of such a limitation on ALM algorithm performance.