Group Communication Support for Distributed Multimedia and CSCW
Systems
The Collaborative Computing Transport Layer (CCTL) is a communication
substrate consisting of a suite of multiparty protocols, providing varying
service qualities among process groups.
We have designed CCTL explicitly to support the needs of distributed
collaborative and multimedia applications.
CCTL is based on a two-level group hierarchy.
Logical interconnections among entities,
called channels, define an
efficient and lightweight group mechanism.
Channels support a variety of service qualities such as reliability
and message ordering.
Related channels can also be combined to form sessions,
heavy-weight groups which provide a default atomic multicast service.
The CCTL architecture supports various membership protocols,
including a relaxed form of virtual synchrony, tailored
to the quality of service offered by a particular channel.
Our two-level architecture allows simple and efficient implementation
of the membership protocols.
In this paper, we present implementations of CCTL
and compare and relate our implementations to alternative
approaches.
Index: Distributed Systems Architecture, Group Communication, CSCW,
Multimedia, Membership Protocols, Virtual Synchrony.
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