A high performance totally ordered multicast protocol

This paper presents the Reliable Multicast Protocol (RMP). RMP provides a totally ordered, reliable, atomic multicast service on top of an unreliable multicast datagram service such as IP Multicasting. RMP is fully and symmetrically distributed so that no site bears an undue portion of the communication load. RMP provides a wide range of guarantees, from unreliable delivery to totally ordered delivery, to K-resilient, majority resilient, and totally resilient atomic delivery. These QoS guarantees may be selected on a per packet basis. RMP provides many communication options, including virtual synchrony, a publisher/subscriber model of message delivery, a client/server model of delivery, an implicit naming service, mutually exclusive handlers for messages, and mutually exclusive locks.