CHATNET-aDistributedMulti-.PDF

CHATNET - a Distributed Multi- channel Conferencing Protocol Gerrit Hiddink University of Twente January 1995 ABSTRACT The aim of this paper is to give insight into the problems of the IRC protocol, and how they are solved by the proposed protocol, called Chatnet. It also explains the structure of Chatnet, how it is divided into functional parts and how these parts interact. Special attention is given to the Multicast layer, and what unsolved problems still exist. Also the error-correcting properties of the protocol are explained. Finally some concluding remarks are given. About the author The author is a Computer Science graduate student at the University of Twente in Enschede, Holland. His fields of interest are multicast routing, distributed computing and internetworking. His graduation assignment will have something to do with some of these three, applied to ATM networks. The work presented here, however, was conducted in his spare time. E-mail address: hiddinkg@ This paper is to be presented at Gronics ’95, 24 february 1995, Groningen, The Netherlands. 1. What is a distributed nently coupled using communication links, multi-channel conferencing mostly TCP connections. A good way to model protocol anyways? a distributed system is the following: servers are A distributed system is a system that consists of nodes in a graph. The edges are the communica- processing elements with communication chan- tion links between them. If the graph is connec- nels between them. A distributed protocol descri- ted, then information between all nodes can be b e s t h e w ay th e