Other self-configuring host-based distribution projects or papers



Please send mail to Paul Francis (francis@aciri.org) if you want your project to be included on this page, or if you have changes/updates to the current entries.

Note that this page does not include all of the myriad forms of host-based distribution that are not self-configuring (IRC, Netnews, Pointcast, Mbone, most web-cache architectures, etc. etc. etc.).

It also does not now include the various file-sharing stuff (napster, gnutella, etc.) that is getting so much publicity of late. Gnutella, with its self-configured and distributed searching though certainly fits with the spirit of host-based distribution. A good page for an overview of file sharing efforts is http://opennap.sourceforge.net/.


EndSystem Multicast
This is a project led by  Hui Zhang at the  CMU School of Computer Science .    While the endgoals of EndSystem Multicast  are alligned with those of yoid, the dynamic algorithms used for self-configuration are somewhat different.


Banana Tree Protocol (BTP)
This is a project of David Helder, a PhD student in the EECS Department at the University of Michigan. BTP is actually a subproject under Jungle Monkey, a distributed file sharing application. Jungle Monkey originally planned to use IP multicast, but they switched to a host-based approach because of the lack of IP multicast availability.


RMX--Reliable Multicast proXies
RMX is part of the  MASH  project at  the  UCBerkeley Computer Science Division.   Its focus is to extend MASH beyond IP multicast by using RMX boxes to connect islands of IP multicast.  As of this writing, the self-configuration aspects of RMX have not been published.


IMRoute
IMRoute is a protocol for host-based multicast over mobile wireless networks developed at  Telcordia and the University of Maryland.  They have produced an  IETF  internet-draft for the Manet working group:  draft-talpade-manet-amroute-00.txt .   IMRoute assumes the existence of an underlying broadcast mechanism for configuration purposes. I believe that this project is no longer active at this point.



Paul Francis, ACIRI
francis@aciri.org
April 2, 2000