AMnet: Active multicasting network

Abstract

Today we are faced with an increasing variety of networks and end systems. The resulting heterogeneous environment imposes new challenges on communication support for multimedia and collaborative applications. AMnet is an approach that provides multipoint communication support for large-scale groups with heterogeneous receivers. Active network nodes are used to deliver data streams with user-tailored QoS. They provide so-called QoS filters that remove information from continuous media streams in order to reduce data rate for low-end receivers without affecting high-end receivers. A prototype implementation of AMnet based on RSVP is presented.