Asynchronous Layered Coding (ALC) is an Internet protocol for content delivery in a reliable, massively scalable, multiple-rate, and congestion-controlled manner. Specified in RFC 5775, it is an IETF proposed standard.
The protocol is specifically designed to provide massive scalability using IP multicast as the underlying network service. Massive scalability in this context means the number of concurrent receivers for an object is potentially in the millions, the aggregate size of objects to be delivered in a session ranges from hundreds of kilobytes to hundreds of gigabytes, each receiver can initiate reception of an object asynchronously, the reception rate of each receiver in the session is the maximum fair bandwidth available between that receiver and the sender, and all of this can be supported using a single sender.
In computer networking, multicast is group communication where data transmission is addressed to a group of destination computers simultaneously. Multicast can be one-to-many or many-to-many distribution. Multicast should not be confused with physical layer point-to-multipoint communication.
Because ALC is focused on reliable content delivery, the goal is to deliver objects as quickly as possible to each receiver while at the same time remaining network friendly to competing traffic. Thus, the congestion control used in conjunction with ALC should strive to maximize use of available bandwidth between receivers and the sender while at the same time backing off aggressively in the face of competing traffic.
The sender side of ALC consists of generating packets based on objects to be delivered within the session and sending the appropriately formatted packets at the appropriate rates to the channels associated with the session. The receiver side of ALC consists of joining appropriate channels associated with the session, performing congestion control by adjusting the set of joined channels associated with the session in response to detected congestion, and using the packets to reliably reconstruct objects. All information flow in an ALC session is in the form of data packets sent by a single sender to channels that receivers join to receive data.
ALC does specify the Session Description needed by receivers before they join a session, but the mechanisms by which receivers obtain this required information is outside the scope of ALC. An application that uses ALC may require that receivers report statistics on their reception experience back to the sender, but the mechanisms by which receivers report back statistics is outside the scope of ALC. In general, ALC is designed to be a minimal protocol instantiation that provides reliable content delivery without unnecessary limitations to the scalability of the basic protocol.
Quality of service (QoS) is the description or measurement of the overall performance of a service, such as a telephony or computer network or a cloud computing service, particularly the performance seen by the users of the network. To quantitatively measure quality of service, several related aspects of the network service are often considered, such as packet loss, bit rate, throughput, transmission delay, availability, jitter, etc.
The Real-time Transport Protocol (RTP) is a network protocol for delivering audio and video over IP networks. RTP is used in communication and entertainment systems that involve streaming media, such as telephony, video teleconference applications including WebRTC, television services and web-based push-to-talk features.
The Transmission Control Protocol (TCP) is one of the main protocols of the Internet protocol suite. It originated in the initial network implementation in which it complemented the Internet Protocol (IP). Therefore, the entire suite is commonly referred to as TCP/IP. TCP provides reliable, ordered, and error-checked delivery of a stream of octets (bytes) between applications running on hosts communicating via an IP network. Major internet applications such as the World Wide Web, email, remote administration, and file transfer rely on TCP. Applications that do not require reliable data stream service may use the User Datagram Protocol (UDP), which provides a connectionless datagram service that emphasizes reduced latency over reliability.
A virtual circuit (VC) is a means of transporting data over a packet switched computer network in such a way that it appears as though there is a dedicated physical layer link between the source and destination end systems of this data. The term virtual circuit is synonymous with virtual connection and virtual channel. Before a connection or virtual circuit may be used, it has to be established, between two or more nodes or software applications, by configuring the relevant parts of the interconnecting network. After that, a bit stream or byte stream may be delivered between the nodes; hence, a virtual circuit protocol allows higher level protocols to avoid dealing with the division of data into segments, packets, or frames.
In computer networking, the transport layer is a conceptual division of methods in the layered architecture of protocols in the network stack in the Internet protocol suite and the OSI model. The protocols of this layer provide host-to-host communication services for applications. It provides services such as connection-oriented communication, reliability, flow control, and multiplexing.
Network congestion in data networking and queueing theory is the reduced quality of service that occurs when a network node or link is carrying more data than it can handle. Typical effects include queueing delay, packet loss or the blocking of new connections. A consequence of congestion is that an incremental increase in offered load leads either only to a small increase or even a decrease in network throughput.
The RTP Control Protocol (RTCP) is a sister protocol of the Real-time Transport Protocol (RTP). Its basic functionality and packet structure is defined in RFC 3550. RTCP provides out-of-band statistics and control information for an RTP session. It partners with RTP in the delivery and packaging of multimedia data, but does not transport any media data itself.
In computer networking, the Datagram Congestion Control Protocol (DCCP) is a message-oriented transport layer protocol. DCCP implements reliable connection setup, teardown, Explicit Congestion Notification (ECN), congestion control, and feature negotiation. The IETF published DCCP as RFC 4340, a proposed standard, in March 2006. RFC 4336 provides an introduction.
Xpress Transport Protocol (XTP) is a transport layer protocol for high-speed networks promoted by the XTP Forum developed to replace TCP. XTP provides protocol options for error control, flow control, and rate control. Instead of separate protocols for each type of communication, XTP controls packet exchange patterns to produce different models, e.g. reliable datagrams, transactions, unreliable streams, and reliable multicast connections.
Transmission Control Protocol (TCP) uses a network congestion-avoidance algorithm that includes various aspects of an additive increase/multiplicative decrease (AIMD) scheme, with other schemes such as slow start and congestion window to achieve congestion avoidance. The TCP congestion-avoidance algorithm is the primary basis for congestion control in the Internet. Per the end-to-end principle, congestion control is largely a function of internet hosts, not the network itself. There are several variations and versions of the algorithm implemented in protocol stacks of operating systems of computers that connect to the Internet.
Selective Repeat ARQ/Selective Reject ARQ is a specific instance of the automatic repeat-request (ARQ) protocol used to solve sequence number dilemma in communications.
Connection-oriented communication is a network communication mode in telecommunications and computer networking, where a communication session or a semi-permanent connection is established before any useful data can be transferred, and where a stream of data is delivered in the same order as it was sent. The alternative to connection-oriented transmission is connectionless communication, for example the datagram mode communication used by the IP and UDP protocols, where data may be delivered out of order, since different network packets are routed independently, and may be delivered over different paths.
IP multicast is a method of sending Internet Protocol (IP) datagrams to a group of interested receivers in a single transmission. It is the IP-specific form of multicast and is used for streaming media and other network applications. It uses specially reserved multicast address blocks in IPv4 and IPv6.
In computer networking, a reliable protocol is a protocol which notifies the sender whether or not the delivery of data to intended recipients was successful. Reliability is a synonym for assurance, which is the term used by the ITU and ATM Forum.
Retransmission, essentially identical with Automatic repeat request (ARQ), is the resending of packets which have been either damaged or lost. Retransmission is one of the basic mechanisms used by protocols operating over a packet switched computer network to provide reliable communication.
Packet loss occurs when one or more packets of data travelling across a computer network fail to reach their destination. Packet loss is either caused by errors in data transmission, typically across wireless networks, or network congestion. Packet loss is measured as a percentage of packets lost with respect to packets sent.
In computing, Microsoft's Windows Vista and Windows Server 2008 introduced in 2007/2008 a new networking stack named Next Generation TCP/IP stack,
to improve on the previous stack in several ways.
The stack includes native implementation of IPv6, as well as a complete overhaul of IPv4. The new TCP/IP stack uses a new method to store configuration settings that enables more dynamic control and does not require a computer restart after a change in settings. The new stack, implemented as a dual-stack model, depends on a strong host-model and features an infrastructure to enable more modular components that one can dynamically insert and remove.
ATSC-M/H is a U.S. standard for mobile digital TV that allows TV broadcasts to be received by mobile devices.
A reliable multicast protocol is a computer networking protocol that provides a reliable sequence of packets to multiple recipients simultaneously, making it suitable for applications such as multi-receiver file transfer.
