Selective Multicast Communication in Distributed Systems

Abstract

Most current techniques for communications between the software components of a distributed application are limited to one-to-one communication; there is little support for one-to-many or many-to-many communications. We have developed a framework for selective multicast, a mechanism supporting one-to-many and many-to-many communications, where components of an application can communicate with each other. After discussing the overall requirements for a selective multicast environment, we describe our approach to selective multicast. An environment to support selective multicast in distributed system is then described in detail. We demonstrate selective multicast mechanism by providing an application of connecting Unix tools using selective multicast. (Also cross-referenced as UMIACS-TR-92-116)