Epidemic-style (gossip-based) techniques have recently emerged as a class of scalable and reliable protocols for peer-to-peer multicast dissemination in large process groups. However, popular implementations of epidemic-style dissemination suffer from two major drawbacks: (a) Network Overhead: When deployed on a WANwide or VPN-wide scale they generate a large number of packets that transit across the boundaries of multiple network domains (e.g., LANs, subnets, ASs), causing an overload on core

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... etwork elements such as bridges, routers, and associated links; (b) Lack of Adaptivity: They impose the same load on process group members and the network even under reduced failure rates (viz., packet losses, process failures). In this paper, we describe two protocols to address these problems: (1) a Hierarchical Gossiping protocol, and (2) an Adaptive Dissemination framework (for multicasts) that allows use of any gossiping primitive within it. These protocols work within a virtual peer-to-peer hierarchy called the Leaf Box Hierarchy. Processes can be allocated in a topologically aware manner to the leaf boxes of this structure, so that (1) and (2) produce low traffic across domain boundaries in the network, and induce minimal overhead when there are no failures.