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Test your multicast connectivity to RNP2

RNP's Engineering and Operation Center (CEO) has installed a Beacon server in its headquarters, in Rio de Janeiro. Its purpose is permitting any user to test his multicast connectivity to RNP2 backbone. The Beacon is a free tool, created by the National Laboratory for Applied Network Research, in the National Science Foundation, in order to monitor the performance of a multicast session.

The Beacon package has two components: the Beacon Client (also called only Beacon) and the Beacon Server. The first one is a software through which a group of users exchanges packages among one another during a multicast session, calculating parameters such as loss, delay and jitter. This information is sent to a central station, the Beacon Server, where it is consolidated. The resulting matrix is presented in an HTML format, allowing users to evaluate how good the connectivity of their machines to the others is. RNP will keep a Beacon Client running nonstop in order to interact with other Beacons.

The CEO, together with RNP's Information Center, has prepared a web page with guidelines regarding the configuration and use of the Beacon as well as instructions on how to download the program package from the Internet. RNP's Beacon Server's address is http://beaconserver.nc-rj.rnp.br/.

Multicast is a "one to many" kind of transmission service. With this technology, a single data flow is produced in the source and distributed to several interested users and only to them, as opposed to what happens with the unicast and broadcast transmission modes. Its great advantage is band economy. Multicast also offers support to distributed applications, bringing benefits in the use of multimedia resources, necessary, for instance, in videoconferences and distance education.

Last year, RNP worked on a pilot project to evaluate an experimental multicast environment in RNP2 backbone. In 2002, the experience gotten in the testing stage has started to be extended to the entire academic network.

[RNP, 06.05.2002]