Your Own Internet Distribution (YOID)
		http://www.isi.edu/div7/yoid/

		USC Information Sciences Institute
		    Release 1.0, January 2002


INTRODUCTION

The Yoid project aims to develop scalable host-based distribution
protocols which are layered over reasonably constructed tree topologies.
The trees are constructed by the participating hosts and may use
either native IP multicast, unicast tunnels, or a combination of both.
Unlike the MBone, which is constructed using both native multicast and
tunnels, Yoid is purely a host-based routing infrastructure.

The initial release of Yoid provides a distribution service that
can mimic IP multicast functionality at the application layer.
To demonstrate the utility of this feature, we offer the ability to run
the common IP multicast-based audio/video conferencing tools over Yoid.
This allows users to perform multi-party conferencing with participants
that do not have access to native IP multicast services.  Additional,
we provide the ability to gateway an IP multicast group into and out of
a Yoid distribution tree.  This can be used to construct a multi-party
conference which includes heterogeneous participants where some are
IP multicast connected and others rely on Yoid to multicast over an
unicast infrastructure.

Our next release will feature support for the H.323 conferencing tools.
We will support Microsoft's NetMeeting on Windows and open source H.323
clients for Unix based on the OpenH323 project (http://www.openh323.org).

OPERATION

The Yoid functionality runs in a separate application process from
the conferencing tools.  We provide scripts to conveniently launch
the combination of Yoid and a conferencing application with a single
command.  For example, to launch the "Yoidized" form of vic, a user
would invoke yvic.  We have scripts for yvic, yvat, yrat, ywb, and ywbd.
The primarily argument to these scripts is the Yoid URL.  It names the
multicast group and defines the Rendezvous Point (RP).  The URL is of the
form yoid://rendezvous_host/sub_name:port.  The rendezvous_host is the
host name or IP address of the host which will be the RP for the group.
The "sub_name" can be a arbitrary string which differentiates the many
groups that can be hosted by a single RP.  The specified port must be
a free TCP and UDP port that may be used by Yoid on the RP.  This port
number does not need to be freely available on all hosts participating
in this yoid group, only on the RP host.

REQUIREMENTS

All packages have been tested on the following platforms: FreeBSD 4.x,
Linux 2.4, and Solaris 2.6, and Windows 98/2000.

INSTALLING 

See the INSTALL file.

RUNNING YOID

* Install the applications you want to run over YOID.
     Currently, YOID supports only the following applications for desktop
     conferencing:
     - wb (from LBL). See README.wb for details
     - rat (from UCL). See README.rat for details
     - wbd (from UCL)..
     - vat (from OpenMash).
     - vic (from UCL or OpenMash).

     Of course, if you want to run only a 'wb' session for example,
     you don't need to install the other applications.

* Choose one of the participants in the session to become a
     Rendezvous Point (RP), then select and distribute the YOID URL
     to all participants (currently, the URL distribution has to be manual:
     email, web-page, etc). Examples of YOID URL are:

     yoid://myrp.mydomain.edu/wb:5555
     yoid://myrp.mydomain.edu/rat:4444

     where 'myrp.mydomain.edu' is the DNS hostname of the RP host.
     'wb:5555' and 'rat:4444' in the URLs above are the YOID group
     names. Both the string part ('wb' and 'rat') and the port numbers
     (5555 and 4444) must be different for each YOID group created on
     the same RP host. The string part does not have to be the same
     as the application name.

* Create the session for each of the applications on the RP host
     (for trouble-shooting purposes, it will be a good idea to open
      separate xterm windows to run each of the commands):

     ./ywb yoid://myrp.mydomain.edu/wb:5555
     ./yrat yoid://myrp.mydomain.edu/rat:4444

* After the sessions have been created, the other participants
     can join by running the exact same commands as above.

MAILING LISTS 

The YOID users mailing list is: yoid-users@isi.edu

To subscribe, send email to majordomo@isi.edu with the following
command inside the body of the email:
    subscribe yoid-users
   OR
    subscribe yoid-users <your email address>

For problems, questions, bug reports, send email to yoid-users@isi.edu
If it is a problem/bug report, include:
    - OS type and version (use 'unane -a' if you are not sure). E.g:
      FreeBSD-4.2-RELEASE
       OR
      Linux RedHat-7.0 with kernel version 2.2.16-22
    - Brief problem description
    - How to repeat the problem (if repeatable)
    - Any relevant warning or error messages
    - How to solve the problem (if you know that)
    - Any other information that you may think is relevant.