Scalable Reliable Multicast Using Erasure-Correcting Re-sends

Reliable multicast schemes often cannot scale to large receiver sets due to the problems of state explosion and message implosion. In this paper we propose Erasure Correcting Scalable Reliable Multicast, ECSRM. ECSRM is based on the SRM framework proposed by Floyd et. al., which utilized NACK suppression to reduce message implosion. ECSRM makes a number of modifications to SRM to addressed enhanced scalability and rate control. Most notably, instead of resending lost packets, erasure-correcting encoded packets are sent in response to NACK messages.