	RMDP, a Reliable Multicast data Distribution Protocol.

		Luigi Rizzo (l.rizzo@iet.unipi.it)
	    Lorenzo Vicisano (l.vicisano@cs.ucl.ac.uk)

		    Version 0.50 -- 18-jun-1997

	    WARNING WARNING WARNING WARNING WARNING WARNING
	This is a very experimental version for evaluation only.
    It is extremely buggy and insecure -- use it at your own risk.

RMDP is a multicast ftp-like application, especially suited to
those cases where the same file is requested by many users at the
same time.  RMDP sends data using multicast (or unicast) UDP, and
uses a redundant encoding of data so that transfers can be carried
on reliably even in presence of huge losses (30..50% and more),
and little or no feedback is required from the receivers.

An rmdp server is simply started with

	rmdpd

It listens to a multicast port (default 224.5.5.5/5656) and a
unicast port (default 5656).

A client can request files as

	rmdp [-u] [-o outfilename] rmdp://host/file

the request is sent to a multicast port, any available server will
respond using a unicast port, then data are transmitted over a
multicast channel. If the -u flag is used, then all transaction
occur over a unicast channel. Some of the advantages of rmdp --
namely, sharing bandwidth -- are lost, but others remain -- most
noticeably, the graceful degradation of performance in presence of
large losses.

More options are present, and even more will be added in the future.
See the manpage for a full list.

RELEASE INFORMATION:
18-feb-97
	release of v.0.00
18-jun98
	upgraded the FEC code, improved performance, fixed bugs.
