Multicast‐based online auctions: a performance perspective

Online auctions on the Internet have become popular. However, the communication techniques currently used in the online auction industry are primarily based on unicast technology. Unicast‐based online auctions suffer from unbearable delay of the communication between the auctioneer and bidders. Recently, multicast is changing the Internet environment, and is penetrating to the online auction field. This study describes a model for multicast‐based online auctions. The laboratory experiments demonstrate that the communication performance of multicast‐based online auctions is significantly better than that of traditional unicast‐based auctions.