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Data delivery methods can be categorized as "push" or "pull". Push refers to data being delivered without an explicit request from a client. An example is TV/radio signals being broadcast without an explicit request from a client. Clients can tune into a particular channel of interest and receive the delivery. Pull, on the other hand, is the delivery where the user needs to make an explicit effort to receive the data. With pull, data is disseminated only in response to client requests.
Advances in wireless technology have resulted in an emerging broadcast-capable infrastructure. Today it is possible to deploy very high communication bandwidths for data or multimedia communications. A major debate for such infrastructures is whether we should use push or pull to support large client populations. To date, push was suggested to provide a scalability that is not possible with pull. In this project we conclude otherwise based on simulation and experimental prototype results. A major contribution of our work is to show that pull-based algorithms outperform push-based ones. Contrary to the conventional wisdom, this is true even for environments where request processing and scheduling overheads are a significant factor.