A Group Synchronization Mechanism for Stored Media and Its Measured Performance in a Heterogeneous Network

Yutaka ISHIBASHI  Shuji TASAKA  

Publication
IEICE TRANSACTIONS on Communications   Vol.E82-B    No.7    pp.1009-1018
Publication Date: 1999/07/25
Online ISSN: 
DOI: 
Print ISSN: 0916-8516
Type of Manuscript: PAPER
Category: Communication Networks and Services
Keyword: 
media synchronization,  group synchronization,  lip-synch,  multicast communications,  heterogeneous network,  experiment,  

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Summary: 
This paper proposes a group synchronization mechanism which synchronizes slave destinations with the master destination for stored media in multicast communications. At the master and slave destinations, an intra-stream and an inter-stream synchronization mechanisms which were previously proposed by the authors are employed to output the master media stream and slave media streams synchronously. We achieve group synchronization by adjusting the output timing of the master media stream at each slave destination to that at the master destination. We also deal with control of joining an in-progress multicast group. The paper presents experimental results using an interconnected ATM-Ethernet LAN, which is a kind of heterogeneous network. In our experimental system, stored voice and video streams are multicast from a source to plural destinations distributed among distinct networks, and then they are synchronized and output. Furthermore, the paper demonstrates the effectiveness of the mechanism.