Sebastian Meiling: A System-centric Middleware for Universal Multicast

This talk introduces the design and implementation of a system-centric middleware component, that utilizes the common API for transparent hybrid multicast*. Therefore, the modular designed middleware provides an abstraction layer for technology transparent multicast access. Together with the service API, the middleware enables a late-binding of group names to technology dependent group addresses. A service discovery analyses the system environment at runtime and activates available multicast technologies by loading and configuring corresponding service modules. Currently, the middleware offers plug-ins for IP(v4/v6)-Multicast and Scribe-ALM, but is also open for future extensions. In the performance evaluation we compared our prototype implementation with the standard Linux IP-stack. The results show, that the middleware can fully utilize a 1 GBit network link, despite the overhead from technology abstraction and late-binding. 

Presentation Slides

* Matthias Wählisch, Thomas C. Schmidt, Stig Venaas, "A Common API for Transparent Hybrid Multicast", IRTF Internet Draft -- work in progress, No. 01, March 2011.