MUST, a multicast synchronous transfer application for fast intra-campus replications

Abstract

In this paper, we introduce a new multicast application called MUST (multicast synchronous transfer) that allows the replication of hard disk partitions in a fast and efficient way. The main goal of MUST is to help system administrators to easily maintain and update all computers in a lab. MUST transmits its IP packets in multicast mode, avoiding the use of unnecessary bandwidth. Unfortunately, the well known TCP transport protocol cannot be used in this multicast environment since the number of TCP flow control windows (and consequently, the number of ACK) that server should process, grow exponentially. Therefore, we also outline an alternative. multicast transport protocol specifically designed for this application. This way, the number of acknowledge frames are drastically reduced, allowing the use of MUST application in a LAN and intra-campus (directly interconnected LANs via few routers). scenarios. The application has been programmed in C language using standard kernel routines, therefore, MUST can mount almost all existing file systems. In addition, we can distribute our application world wide without incurring legal conflicts.