Reliable and Secure Group Communication

A NC Base Program Project

Many distributed applications require reliable, ordered delivery of messages and membership services for a group of processes. However, IP multicast provides only unreliable unordered delivery of messages and TCP only provides reliable delivery between two processes. Hence a reliable multicast protocol is needed which provides message delivery services similar to TCP but between the members of a group of any size.

The goal is to develop the components needed for a peer-to-peer group communication infrastructure that provides reliability, security, and fault-tolerance while enabling scalability on the Internet scale.

The objectives of this project are to produce

• Infrastructure needed to support true peer-to-peer group communication
• Flexible message delivery options in terms of reliability and ordering
• InterGroup protocols that provide reliable group communication services
• Group Security Layer that provides the secure group communication services

For more info, see:

• Group website: Reliable and Secure Group Communication
• 2-Page Summary, March 2004 (PDF)
• 2-Page Summary, March 2003 (PDF)
• 4-Slide Presentation, March 2003 (PowerPoint Presentation)
• Overview: Reliable and Secure Group Communication (PDF, 172KB)
• Executive Summary: Reliable and Secure Group Communication (PDF, 27KB)