TCP Vegas-like algorithm for layered multicast transmission

Layered multicast is probably the most elegant solution to tackle the heterogeneity problem in multicast delivery of real-time multimedia streams. However, the multiple join experiments carried out by different receivers in order to detect the available bandwidth make it hard to achieve fairness. In the present paper, we present a simple protocol, inspired from TCP-Vegas, that reduces considerably the unnecessary join experiments while achieving intra-session and inter-session fairness as well as being TCP-Friendly.