A proposed novel thematic-based approach to the group communication

Currently there is a fast increasing need for scalable and efficient group communication technology. The IP-multicast is theoretically optimal for such purposes. However, since the deployment of IP-Multicast is time-consuming and costly, the Application-Layer Multicast (ALM) is offered as a solution. In this article we present the design of ALM system to solve the typical scenario where there are many interested hosts in certain institutes and these institutes are relatively far from each other. This novel approach is called Thematic-based Multicast Concept (TMC). The TMC is realized in a communication system with three-level architecture, where each level is formed in different topology, namely the Control, the Data and the Query Topology. In order to ensure a scalable and robust ALM operation, specific algorithms are developed for each level of the TMC architecture.