Active network support for reliable multicast

In retransmission-based reliable multicast, classic approaches to effective retransmission involve retransmission from other receivers and retransmission from servers distributed in the network. Both approaches have limitations of transmission efficiency. We show that caching, computations and retransmission at routers within the network can make retransmission more efficient. Our scheme based on an active network, provides router-assisted reliable multicast transport. Our scheme improves scalability by adaptive and distributed caching and cache utilization by avoiding caching of redundant data packets.