A broadcast protocol for computer network using satellite communication

A new NACK (negative acknowledgement) based broadcast protocol using satellite communications is discussed. A link structure and a link establishment procedure are newly proposed in order to realize various broadcast communications without heavy loads. Broadcast communications, which realize point-to-multipoint communications, offer great advantages in wide area data communications, especially in satellite communications. However, conventional broadcast protocols can result in heavy communication processing loads and procedure complexity under error conditions. This makes it difficult to achieve broadcast communication that can guarantee data transfer to all receivers with efficient channel utilization. In addition to less effectiveness, these protocols cannot realize various broadcast communications. In the proposed method, the trade-off between data transfer guarantee and communication loads is solved by separating retransmission functions into two layers. Therefore, the proposed broadcast protocol can realize flexible and highly efficient broadcast communications