Leveraging emerging network services to scale multimedia applications

Multicast services have been used to transmit multimedia data to large receiver groups. Only recently have counterpart network services been introduced to provide similar scalability and anonymity in the opposite direction (i.e. messages from a group of senders destined for a common receiver). In this paper, we explore how these many-to-one services, specifically the concast service, can be used to improve the scalability and performance of multimedia applications. In particular, we show how such services can be used in both the control and data planes to overcome well-known scalability problems (e.g. with Real Time Protocol) that are difficult to solve effectively with end-system approaches alone. We validate our solutions by presenting experimental results taken from prototype video and audio applications we designed and implemented. Our initial results show substantial reductions in congestion-induced loss using these generic services.