Group Communication for Real-time Continuous Media

In distributed applications, a group of multiple application processes have to send and receive multimedia messages by using the high-speed network. The multimedia message at the application level is decomposed into multiple smaller packets which are transmitted in the network. The multimedia applications may not mind if some packets are lost and in what order packets from di erent processes are received. The application process is required to receive more packets than the minimum receipt ratio " required by the application. In addition, the messages have to be delivered to the destinations in the predetermined time units in the real time applications. The communication system delivers the messages to the destinations in the group so as to satisfy the receipt ratio " and the deadline . The protocol is based on the fully distributed control scheme, i.e. no master controller.