Group communication in distributed multimedia systems

This paper presents AlphaDeltaPhi (ADP) group communication as a method of defining and conducting multi-process end-to-end connection level management in distributed multimedia systems. α represents the reliability, Δ the end-to-end delay and Φ is the synchronization interval for a group connection. In contrast to other group communication paradigms, an ADP-group is a related set of cooperating processes whose communication is supported by allowing a spectrum of quality-of-service and message delivery options to co-exist within the same group. Developed as part of our work with Multimedia Mednet, ADP-group communication is designed to provide appropriate connection management support and network control within distributed multimedia environments characterized by a heterogenous mixture of equipment types, network performance and user interaction