Edmund: a multicast kernel for distributed application

Although many local area networks and operating systems support the use of multicast communications, multicast communications have remained primarily an interesting research tool. However, the growing research interest in multimedia and hypermedia for knowledge-based models and cooperative work environments, and the need for object migration in distributed systems, suggest that there are other applications that could benefit from the use of multicast. This paper presents an overview of Edmund, a light weight kernel that supports interprocess multicast messaging on a network of Intel 80286 personal computers, as well as some of our preliminary research results which demonstrate the uses and benefits of multicast communication.