A practical proactive hybrid FEC/ARQ technique for reliable multi-session multicast communication

Abstract

The application of FEC to multicast communication has seen significant developments recently. In this work, we have developed a new multi-session multicast QoS scheme using a hybrid proactive FEC/ARQ technique, and used a laboratory test-bed in order to evaluate this scheme. Our preliminary evaluation of hybrid proactive FEC/ARQ technique suggests shorter transmission time, decreased NAK traffic, and improved bandwidth utilization (reduced retransmission packets) when compared to the traditional ARQ reliable multicast technique.