A proposal of flow control mechanism for multicast ABR and its performance

One of the functions that should be provided in ATM LANs is multicast communication. For multicast communication on ATM LANs, the architecture of the switch fabric and protocols for signaling have been studied. However, when data communication using a multicast connection such as a LAN emulation service which expects the high throughput is provided, ABR (available bit rate) service on a multicast connection (multicast ABR) is also required. ABR service has been actively discussed in the ATM Forum. Unfortunately, the study on flow control mechanism for multicast ABR is not sufficient. This paper discusses a suitable flow control mechanism for multicast ABR and shows its performance. At first, it summarizes the approaches for the flow control and describes the outline of the proposed mechanism based on the suitable approach. Next it evaluates the performance and shows the effectiveness of the mechanism by simulations. Moreover, after pointing out the importance of operations in the case of link failures on the multicast tree, it discusses the cooperation in this case between the flow control and the related functions to detect these failures.