Fcast is a scalable reliable multicast file transfer protocol based on FEC.

Reliable data multicast is problematic. ACK/NACK schemes do not scale to large audiences, and simple data replication wastes network bandwidth. Fcast, file multicasting, combines multicast with Forward Error Correction (FEC) to address both these problems. Like classic multicast, Fcast scales to large audiences, and like other FEC schemes, it uses bandwidth very efficiently.

• Article about Fcast in Dr. Dobb's Journal
• Fcast paper in IEEE Network (similar to Dr. Dobb's, but more detail; a little harder to read) Word postscript
• Tech report on Fcast (yet more details): Postscript Word
• Related IETF RFCs:
  • Asynchronous Layered Coding (ALC) Protocol Instantiation, Luby, M., Gemmell, J., Vicisano, L., Rizzo, L., and Crowcroft, J., RFC 3450, December 2002. rfc3450.txt also available at ftp://ftp.rfc-editor.org/in-notes/rfc3450.txt
  • Layered Coding Transport (LCT) Building Block, Luby, M., Gemmell, J., Vicisano, L., Rizzo, L., Handley, M., and Crowcroft, J., RFC 3451 , December 2002. rfc3451.txt also available at ftp://ftp.rfc-editor.org/in-notes/rfc3451.txt
  • Forward Error Correction (FEC) Building Block, Luby, M., Vicisano, L., Gemmell, J., Rizzo, L., Handley, M., Crowcroft, J., RFC 3452, December 2002 rfc3452.txt also available at ftp://ftp.rfc-editor.org/in-notes/rfc3452.txt
  • The Use of Forward Error Correction (FEC) in Reliable Multicast, Luby, M., Vicisano, L.. Gemmell, J., Rizzo, L., Handley, M., Crowcroft, J., RFC 3453, December 2002 rfc3453.txt also available at ftp://ftp.rfc-editor.org/in-notes/rfc3453.txt

We used to have an ActiveX implementation of Fcast posted here, but are no longer supporting that demo.

Other BARC multicast information

Home page of Luigi Rizzo, who started file multicasting.