Private overlay multicast for the defense threat reduction agency collaboration center (DCC)

Growing demand for use of Internet/Web-based services in real-time distributed virtual simulation (RT-DVS) and other real-time applications is fueling extensive interest in overlay multicast protocols. These applications demand Quality of Service (QoS) and many-to-many multicast services that are not available in underlying Internet services today. This paper describes a common user Architecture for Private Overlay Multicast to support efficient communications for the Defense Threat Reduction Agency (DTRA) collaborative environments and distributed simulations. Many of the processes and applications that support the DTRA operational environment require group communications, which means some form of multicasting where one process sends to a group of other processes. Multicasting, therefore, is a critical element in the deployment of scalable networked collaborative and simulation capabilities for DTRA.