多播拥塞控制研究进展

讨论了多播拥塞控制的关键问题及各种解决方法，分析和比较了目前一些有代表性的多播拥塞控制算法，指出了其中存在的问题，并提出了未来的工作方向。     

FLID-DL: congestion control for layered multicast

We describe fair layered increase/decrease with dynamic layering (FLID-DL): a new multirate congestion control algorithm for layered multicast sessions. FLID-DL generalizes the receiver-driven layered congestion control protocol (RLC) introduced by Vicisano et al. (Proc. IEEE INFOCOM, San Francisco, CA, , p.996-1003, Mar. 1998)ameliorating the problems associated with large Internet group management protocol (IGMP) leave latencies and abrupt rate increases. Like RLC, FLID-DL, is a scalable, receiver-driven congestion control mechanism in which receivers add layers at sender-initiated synchronization points and leave layers when they experience congestion. FLID-DL congestion control coexists with transmission control protocol (TCP) flows as well as other FLID-DL sessions and supports general rates on the different multicast layers. We demonstrate via simulations that our congestion control scheme exhibits better fairness properties and provides better throughput than previous methods. A key contribution that enables FLID-DL and may be useful elsewhere is dynamic layering (DL), which mitigates the negative impact of long IGMP leave latencies and eliminates the need for probe intervals present in RLC. We use DL to respond to congestion much faster than IGMP leave operations, which have proven to be a bottleneck in practice for prior work.     

Equation-based end-to-end single-rate multicast congestion control

Among the recently proposed single-rate multicast congestion control protocols is transmission control protocol-friendly multicast congestion control (TFMCC; Widmer and Handley 2001; Floyd et al. 2000; Widmer et al. IEEE Netw 15:28–37, 2001), which is an equation-based single-rate protocol that extends the mechanisms of the unicast TCP-friendly rate control (TFRC) protocol into the multicast domain. In TFMCC, each receiver estimates its throughput using an equation that estimates the steady-state throughput of a TCP source. The source then adjusts its sending rate according to the slowest receiver within the session (a.k.a., current-limiting receiver, CLR). TFMCC is a relatively simple, scalable, and TCP-friendly multicast congestion control protocol. However, TFMCC is hindering its throughput performance by adopting an equation derived from the unicast TFRC protocol. Further, TFMCC is slow to react to congestion conditions that usually result in a change of the CLR. This paper is motivated by these two observations and proposes an improved version of TFMCC, which we refer to as hybrid-TFMCC (or H-TFMCC for short). First, each receiver estimates its throughput using an equation that models the steady-state throughput of a multicast source controlled according to the additive increase multiplicative decrease (AIMD) approach. The second modification consists of adopting a hybrid sender/receiver-based rate control strategy, where the sending rate can be adjusted by the source or initiated by the current or a new CLR. The source monitors RTT variations on the CLR path, in order to rapidly adjust the sending rate to network conditions. Simulation results show that these modifications result in remarkable performance improvement with respect to throughput, time to react, and magnitude of oscillations. We also show that H-TFMCC remains TCP-friendly and achieves a higher fairness index than that achieved by TFMCC.     

新的多速率多播拥塞控制方案

提出了一种新的基于数据包束探测(packet-bunch probe)和TCP吞吐量公式的多速率多播拥塞控制方案PTMCC(packet-bunch probe and TCP-formula based multicast congestion control)。这种接收端驱动的拥塞控制,采用数据包束来探测网络的可用带宽,利用TCP吞吐量公式得到TCP友好速率,并采用了新的速率调节算法。仿真实验表明,PTMCC在收敛性、灵敏性以及TCP友好性上具有较好的性能。     

A study of multicast congestion control for UMTS

In this paper, we study the applicability of multicast congestion control over universal mobile telecommunications system (UMTS) networks. We analyze two well‐known multicast congestion control schemes for fixed networks, namely TCP‐friendly multicast congestion control and pragmatic general multicast congestion control. We investigate their behavior when they are employed in UMTS networks and we analyze the problems arose when these mechanisms are applied over the wireless links of the UMTS terrestrial radio‐access network. Additionally, we propose necessary improvements to these legacy schemes and explain the necessity of these modifications. The proposed schemes are implemented in the ns‐2 network simulator and are evaluated under various network conditions and topologies. Finally, we measure the performance of the proposed modified schemes and compare them with the corresponding legacy mechanisms. Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Multilayer multicast congestion control in satellite environments

It is well known that long and variable link delays, link errors, and handoffs in satellite environments seriously interfere with transmission control protocol's (TCP's) congestion control mechanisms. These channel characteristics also adversely affect existing multilayer multicast congestion control schemes when they are used in satellite environments. In addition, these schemes still have problems with fairly sharing bandwidth with TCP flows, controlling the overhead of frequent grafting and pruning, and handling misbehaving receivers. In this paper, we present a new multilayer multicast congestion control scheme that is suitable for satellite environments and overcomes most of the disadvantages of existing schemes. Our scheme is not affected by the long and variable delays of satellite links. Link errors also do not decrease the performance of our scheme. Further, our scheme has very limited control overhead. In addition to these advantages specific to satellite environments, our scheme achieves good fairness in sharing bandwidth with TCP sessions and is not sensitive to misbehaving receivers.     

A framework for systematic evaluation of multicast congestion control protocols

Congestion control is a major requirement for multicast to be deployed in the current Internet. Due to the complexity and conflicting tradeoffs, the design and testing of multicast congestion control protocols is difficult. In this paper, we present a novel framework for systematic testing of multicast congestion control protocols. In our framework, we first design an appropriate model for the studied protocols based on the protocols specifications and correctness conditions, and then we develop an automated search engine to generate all possible error scenarios and filter these errors to come up with a selected set of scenarios that we evaluate in more detailed simulations. Our methodology helps in identifying the potential problems of the studied protocols and points to possible improvements. We hope that this will provide a valuable tool to expedite the development and standardization of such protocols.     

A survey of congestion control schemes for multicast video applications

Congestion control for IP multicast on the Internet has been one of the main issues that challenge a rapid deployment of IP multicast. In this article, we survey and discuss the most important congestion control schemes for multicast video applications on the Internet. We start with a discussion of the different elements of a multicast congestion control architecture. A congestion control scheme for multicast video possesses specific requirements for these elements. These requirements are discussed, along with the evaluation criteria for the performance of multicast video. We categorize the schemes we present into end-to-end schemes and router-supported schemes. We start with the end-to-end category and discuss several examples of both single-rate multicast applications and layered multicast applications. For the router-supported category, we first present single-rate schemes that utilize filtering of multicast packets by the routers. Next we discuss receiver-based layered schemes that rely on routers group?flow control of multicast sessions. We evaluate a number of schemes that belong to each of the two categories.     

A framework for routing and congestion control for multicast information flows

We propose a new multicast routing and scheduling algorithm called multipurpose multicast routing and scheduling algorithm (MMRS). The routing policy load balances among various possible routes between the source and the destinations, basing its decisions on the message queue lengths at the source node. The scheduling is such that the flow of a session depends on the congestion of the next hop links. MMRS is throughput optimal. In addition, it has several other attractive features. It is computationally simple and can be implemented in a distributed, asynchronous manner. It has several parameters which can be suitably modified to control the end-to-end delay and packet loss in a topology-specific manner. These parameters can be adjusted to offer limited priorities to some desired sessions. MMRS is expected to play a significant role in end-to-end congestion control in the multicast scenario.     

Fair distributed congestion control in multirate multicast networks

We study fairness of resource allocation in multirate, multicast networks. In multirate networks, different receivers of the same multicast session can receive service at different rates. We develop a mathematical framework to model the maxmin fair allocation of bandwidth with minimum and maximum rate constraints. We present a necessary and sufficient condition for a rate allocation to be maxmin fair in a multirate, multicast network. We propose a distributed algorithm for computing the maxmin fair rates allocated to various source-destination pairs. This algorithm has a low message exchange overhead, and is guaranteed to converge to the maxmin fair rates in finite time.     

On max-min fair congestion control for multicast ABR service in ATM

In the ATM Forum activities, considerable efforts have focused on the congestion control of point-to-point available bit rate (ABR) service. We present a novel approach that extends existing point-to-point (unicast) congestion control protocols to a point-to-multipoint (multicast) environment. In particular, we establish a unified framework to derive a multicast congestion control protocol for an ABR service from a given rate-based unicast protocol. We generalize a known necessary and sufficient condition on the max-min fairness of unicast rate allocation for a multicast service. Using this condition, we show that the resulting multicast protocol derived using our framework preserves the fairness characteristics of the underlying unicast protocol. The practical significance of our approach is illustrated by extending a standard congestion control mechanism for an ABR service to a multicast environment. The performance of the resulting multicast protocol is examined using benchmark network configurations suggested by the traffic management subworking group at the ATM Forum, and simulation results are presented to substantiate our claims     

OMAC: A new access control architecture for overlay multicast communications

Multicast communications concern the transfer of data among multiple users. Multicast communications can be provided at the network layer—an example is IP multicast—or at the application layer, also called overlay multicast. An important issue in multicast communications is to control how different users—senders, receivers, and delivery nodes—access the transmitted data as well as the network resources. Many researchers have proposed solutions addressing access control in IP multicast. However, little attention has been paid to overlay multicast. In this paper, we investigate the access control issues in overlay multicast and present OMAC: a new solution to address these issues. OMAC provides access control for senders, receivers, and delivery nodes in overlay multicast. The proposed architecture, which is based on symmetric key cryptosystem, centralizes the authentication process in one server whereas it distributes the authorization process among the delivery nodes. Moreover, delivery nodes are utilized as a buffer zone between end systems and the authentication server, making it less exposed to malicious end systems. To evaluate our work, we have used simulation to compare the performance of OMAC against previous solutions. Results of the simulation show that OMAC outperforms previous multicast access control schemes. Copyright © 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Layered multicast congestion control by particle swarm optimization in heterogeneous environment

To enhance multicast throughput in heterogeneous environment,a new layered multicast congestion control scheme is proposed.With the goal of maximizing global satisfaction of the whole group,allocating sending rate in each layer is formulated to an optimization problem.Since the problem is noncovexity,the sender uses particle swarm optimization to search a set of optimal layers rates.The new scheme also eliminates ’lowest-first’ phenomenon by proposing a feedbacks suppression algorithm named equal-probability sampling (EPS).Upon EPS all the receivers send feedbacks at equal probability without bias.Simulation results prove that the new scheme can enhance global satisfaction and multicast throughput efficiently,compared with the traditional layered multicast congestion control scheme based on representatives.     

Impact of TCP-like congestion control on the throughput of multicast groups

We study the impact of random queueing delays stemming from traffic variability on the performance of a multicast session. With a simple analytical model, we analyze the throughput degradation within a multicast (one-to-many) tree under TCP-like congestion and flow control. We use the (max,plus) formalism together with methods based on stochastic comparison (association and convex ordering) and on the theory of extremes to prove various properties of the throughput. We first prove that the throughput predicted by a deterministic model is systematically optimistic. In the presence of light-tailed random delays, we show that the throughput decreases according to the inverse of the logarithm of the number of receivers. We find analytically an upper and a lower bound for the throughput degradation. Within these bounds, we characterize the degradation which is obtained for various tree topologies. In particular, we observe that a class of trees commonly found in IP multicast sessions is significantly more sensitive to traffic variability than other topologies.     

A congestion control middleware layer with dynamic bandwidth management for satellite communications

Historically, satellites have been set aside for what regards Internet connectivity; however, the interest in their usage to provide Internet connectivity is now rising again. Because of the growing demand for Internet services around the world, satellites can be an effective medium to serve scarcely populated areas as well as mission‐critical communications. While the standard transmission control protocol (TCP) performs badly when employed on satellite links for the high propagation delay, when a number of client hosts are wirelessly connected to a gateway that forwards and receives traffic across such links, the major limit is represented by the channel condition estimation performed by the TCP through loss detection and/or acknowledgement‐based timing information. This paper proposes congestion control middleware layer (C²ML+), a centralized and collaborative middleware with dynamic bandwidth management, that aims to improve performance and QoS for TCP flows in the aforementioned scenarios. Results of ns‐3 simulations show an improvement in aggregate throughput, a significant reduction of latencies because of low queues occupancy levels, and higher fairness and friendliness guarantees among flows. They also confirm that C²ML+ allows a dynamic and efficient usage of the bottleneck link, avoiding a waste of resources when some client nodes are unable to fully exploit their transmission potential. Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Leveraging single rate schemes in multiple rate multicast congestion control design

A significant impediment to deployment of multicast services is the daunting technical complexity of developing, testing and validating congestion control protocols fit for wide-area deployment. Protocols such as pragmatic general multicast congestion control (pgmcc) and TCP-friendly multicast congestion control (TFMCC) have recently made considerable progress on the single rate case, i.e., where one dynamic reception rate is maintained for all receivers in the session. However, these protocols have limited applicability, since scaling to session sizes beyond tens of participants with heterogeneous available bandwidth necessitates the use of multiple rate protocols. Unfortunately, while existing multiple rate protocols exhibit better scalability, they are both less mature than single rate protocols and suffer from high complexity. We propose a new approach to multiple rate congestion control that leverages proven single rate congestion control methods by orchestrating an ensemble of independently controlled single rate sessions. We describe a new multiple rate congestion control algorithm for layered multicast sessions that employs a single rate multicast congestion control as the primary underlying control mechanism for each layer. Our new scheme combines the benefits of single rate congestion control with the scalability and flexibility of multiple rates to provide a sound multiple rate multicast congestion control policy.     

SECURE GROUP COMMUNICATIONS FOR LARGE DYNAMIC MULTICAST GROUP

As the major problem in multicast security, the group key management has been the focus of research. But few results are satisfactory. In this paper, the problems of group key management and access control for large dynamic multicast group have been researched and a solution based on SubGroup Secure Controllers (SGSCs) is presented, which selves many problems in IOLUS system and WGL scheme.     

A novel key management scheme for dynamic multicast communications

Secure multicasting allows the sender to deliver an identical secret to an arbitrary set of recipients through an insecure broadcasting channel, whereas the unintended recipients cannot obtain the secret. A practical approach for securing multicast communications is to apply a session key to encrypt the transmitted data. However, the challenges of secure multicast are to manage the session keys possessed by a dynamic group of recipients and to reduce the overhead of computation and transmission when the membership is changed. In this paper, we propose a new key management scheme for dynamic multicast communication, which is based on privacy homomorphism and Chinese remainder theorem. Our scheme can efficiently and securely deliver an identical message to multiple recipients. In particular, the complexity of the key update process in our scheme is O(1). Copyright © 2008 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

一种安全组播传输策略

IP组播建立在一个非封闭的传输系统上,为了实现安全组播,除了密钥加密信息,还需要下层的通讯子网提供支持,这样才能彻底实现安全封闭的组播通讯。其中讨论了一些流行的密钥管理框架,密钥更新方案以及用户管理机制。通过这些方案可以防止信息泄漏、Dos攻击、组攻击、伪造信息,从而实现了组播的安全通讯。