Bell Laboratories unveils Reliable Multicast Software for real-time Internet applications

Business Wire, Sept 17, 1996

MURRAY HILL, N.J.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Sept. 17, 1996--Bell Laboratories today demonstrated a new and uniquely reliable method of transmitting real-time data -- such as software distribution, financial news, and e-mail -- over the Internet.

The company, which unveiled its Reliable Multicast Software (RMS) at the Networld/Interop trade show in Atlanta, indicated that it is seeking a limited number of partners to test a beta version of the software for mission-critical corporate applications.

"RMS solves problems created by the explosion of networked collaborative applications in today's workplace. These applications place tremendous burdens on existing network protocols, particularly on the IP Multicast protocol used in today's Multicast Backbone and intranets," said David Stahl, Manager of Business Development for Bell Laboratories. "As use of collaborative applications increases, so does the need to upgrade the network infrastructure to support reliable delivery of broadcast information."

RMS software is designed to support point-to-multipoint data transport and to ensure reliable delivery of data, scalability to any size network, and support for a variety of different hardware and software platforms. The current version of RMS provides reliable transport only, making it ideal for corporate intranets. The next version of the software, expected in 1997, will support more sophisticated real-time applications, such as voice and video.

RMS is based on the Reliable Multicast Transport Protocol (RMTP), which was developed by SanJoy Paul, Member of Technical Staff for Bell Laboratories. RMS provides reliability of data transmission by ensuring that all members of a multicast group receive exact copies of data transmitted by the sender. This is achieved through transmission of status packets which acknowledges the data's receipt status. Therefore, there is no downtime, or latency, in the acknowledgement of data transmission; if A sends messages to B and C and C does not receive the message, the message will get rerouted without delay.

Multicast users are guaranteed scalability through RMS since the protocol ensures that each individual receiver tracks the status of transmitted data. Since the sender is not responsible for acknowledging the receipt of transmissions, very large groups of receivers can be included in the multicast.

Also, the protocol designates local Designated Receivers (DRs), which process status packets from each region of a multicast group, further reducing the sender's status check responsibilities. RMS eliminates multicast data flow problems by allowing users to regulate a sender's data transmissions rate. The software also uses caching to regulate the reception of data in a multicast group, ensuring that slow receivers do not offset faster receivers.

RMS is fully compatible with today's IP Multicast standards and existing Netscape Navigator or Microsoft Explorer browsers can be used as the RMS user interface.

RMS has been tested across five geographical areas and has performed well in Internet tests. Interested beta testers can call David Stahl at 908/949-1767.

Lucent Technologies -- formed as a result of AT&T's restructuring -- designs, builds and delivers a wide range of public and private networks, communications systems and software, consumer and business telephone systems and microelectronics components. Bell Laboratories is the research and development arm of the company.

CONTACT: Bell Laboratories

Chris Pfaff

908/582-7571 (tel.)

908/582-4552 (fax)

cpfaff@lucent.com

or

http://www.lucent.com/internet