ATM multicast service is essential for the support of the applications, such as LAN emulation and IP multicasting. As the multicast network becomes large, the study on the multiple flows for the multicast service and the consolidation of RM cell is required.
In this thesis we focus on the rate control of the ATM ABR multicast service. Traditionally, most multicast services use one flow which has single rate and multicast to all participating leaves. Our main idea is to accommodate the heterogeneity of the multicast service to improve the link utilization and inter-receiver fairness. We propose an algorithm that divides all receivers into the several subgroups and the source carries a separate conversation with each subgroup. In addition, we deal with the another problem of ABR multicast service, that is, consolidation problem. To solve the consolidation delay and noise both, an estimation method for unknown ER value is applied. Finally, we switch our concern to the fairness issue of multicast and unicast connections and check the performances of the proposed schemes by simulation.
