Performance Comparison of Active Network-Based and Non Active Network-Based Single-Rate Multicast Congestion Control Protocols

This paper presents the comparisons of two single-rate multicast protocol, Active Error Recovery/Nominee Congestion Avoidance (AER/ NCA) and Pragmatic General Multicast Congestion Control (PGMCC). Both protocols use worst receiver mechanism, NACK-based feedback, and window-based transmission rate adjustment. AER/NCA is implemented using the new Active Networks technology, while PGMCC is implemented using the traditional passive network. We discovered from the simulation results that both protocols are TCP-friendly. The implementation of active networks causes many computations to be done in the network so that it would degrade network performance. However, in high loss rates network, active networks technology could provide fast recovery to loss packets.