Speeding Multicast By Acknowledgement Reduction Technique (SMART)

Message dissemination speed is increased during multicast operations in a network by intelligently selecting one or more feedback time slots for use by destination nodes. In at least one implementation, a feedback time slot is selected based upon probabilities that a plurality of data packets will be successfully distributed to a plurality of destination nodes by various future time slots. These probabilities may be estimated based on, for example, packet erasure probabilities in the network. In some implementations, only destination nodes that have not yet successfully received a plurality of data packets are permitted to transmit feedback during feedback time slots.