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james e. donnelley proposed a hopwise reliable multicast (HRM) similar to the Internet MBone. but while MBone is a real time multicast distribution service where information may get lost without disturbing the service to much, HRM is intended for non-real time bulk data distribution. HRM would be based on a reliable transport protocol such as TCP. the daemons involved in the data transmission would be clever enough not to distribute data over the same datalink twice. if the data does not arrive at its final destination, it would be re-transmitted, either to an individual host or again by using HRM.
to me, the proposed HRM looks like a very interesting alternative to caching algorithms to reduce Internet network traffic. the idea of distributing data to distribution point while the network traffic is relatively low and - even more important - before the data is requested by the user, seems very appealing. at the same time, it solves the problem of cache notification of obsolete pages.
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