SRM (Scalable Reliable Multicast)

The SRM Paper:

• Floyd, S., Jacobson, V., Liu, C., McCanne, S., and Zhang, L., A Reliable Multicast Framework for Light-weight Sessions and Application Level Framing, IEEE/ACM Transactions on Networking, December 1997, Volume 5, Number 6, pp. 784-803. An earlier version of this paper appeared in ACM SIGCOMM 95, August 1995, pp. 342-356.

Papers related to SRM:

• Gemmell, J., ECSRM - Erasure Correcting Scalable Reliable Multicast, Microsoft Research Technical Report, MSR-TR-97-20, June 1997.
  "Instead of re-sending lost packets, erasure-correcting encoded packets are sent in response to NACK messages." With pointers to some related work.
• Grossglauser, M., Optimal Deterministic Timeouts for Reliable Scalable Multicast, Infocom 1996, pp. 1425-1432. Abstract,
• Kasera, S., Kurose, J., and Towsley, D., Scalable Reliable Multicast Using Multiple Multicast Groups, CMPSCI Technical Report TR 96-73, October 1996.
• Liu, C.-G., Estrin, D., Shenker, S., and Zhang, L., Local Error Recovery in SRM: Comparison of Two Approaches, USC Technical Report 97-648, January 1997.
• Nonnemacher, J., and Biersack, E., Scalable Feedback for Large Groups, IEEE/ACM Transactions on Networking, June 1999.
  This paper suggests feedback using random exponentially distributed timers. (This is a revised version of a technical report from 1997.)
  
• Sharma, P., Estrin, D., Floyd, S., and Zhang, L., Scalable Session Messages in SRM, Technical report, February 1998.

SRM Applications and Toolkits:

• The wb distribution contains the binary code for a number of different platforms. The source code for wb is not publically available. As described in FJLMZ95 (listed above), the current distribution of wb does not implement all of the mechanisms described in the FJLMZ95 paper.
• The MediaBoard in progress from UC Berkeley is a whiteboard that builds on the SRM Toolkit in the MASH architecture.
• The SRM toolkit libsrm includes the core SRM engine, hierarchical namespaces, scalable namespace announcements, a rate-controller for data transmission, and two-step local recovery. This work is from the MASH Project at UC Berkeley.
  

Talks about SRM:

• Jacobson, V., A Reliable Multicast Framework for Light-weight Sessions and Application Level framing (viewgraphs). SIGGOMM 95, Cambridge MA, Sept. 1, 1995.
• Jacobson, V., Lightweight Sessions - A new architecture for realtime applications and protocols (viewgraphs). Networkshop '93, Melbourne, Australia, November 30, 1993.

Other information about reliable multicast:

• Jon Knight's Multicast Transport Protocols web page.
• MIST's Reliable Multicast Protocols web page.
• Todd Montgomery's Reliable Broadcast/Multicast Links.
• The reliable multicast session of the SIGCOMM 96 workshop on Multicast.
• The Reliable Multicast Research Group of the Internet Research Task Force.

Clarifications about products labeled "SRM":

• We originated the acronym "SRM" at LBNL (though we don't have any trademarks or patents). There has been at least one commercial product named SRM. Our view is that SRM is a framework for reliable multicast that is still in progress, with areas such as local recovery, congestion control, and ADU naming still under investigation. Our SRM framework should not be confused with any commercial products that might have choosen to use the same name.

Return to [ Sally Floyd].

Last modified: November 1999