The TMTP project is investigating scalable designs for reliable multicasting. The project is currently supported by ARPA and EPSCoR as part of the Unify Project.

We have developed a reliable multicasting protocol called Tree-based Multicast Transport Protocol (TMTP). TMTP builds on existing technologies by using any unreliable multicast protocol (such as IP multicast support) to multicast data to receivers. To provide reliability, TMTP constructs a hierarchical control tree that implements all error correction and flow control.

The TMTP Protocol is described in the paper:

R. Yavatkar, J. Griffioen, and M. Sudan, A Reliable Dissemination Protocol for Interactive Collaborative Applications. In Proceedings of the ACM Multimedia '95 Conference, November 1995. (html) (PostScript) (GZIP'd/PostScript).

We have developed a working prototype that runs over the Internet MBONE. We plan to make the prototype available in the near future, so check back later for access to the prototype. A description of the API to the TMTP library is also available.