Method and apparatus for flow control in a reliable multicast communication system

A method and system for flow control in a reliable multicast communication protocol, in which a transmitting device transmits sets of multiple data transfer units (DTUs) referred to as "bursts." The transmitting device continues transmitting DTUs within a burst independently with regard to the receipt of any acknowledgements (referred to herein as "status reports") from a number of receiving devices. The transmitting device continues to transmit multiple bursts until the transmitting device reaches a predetermined limitation, referred to as a "burst sliding window" size. The transmitting device transmit DTUs in bursts while a total number of outstanding bursts that have not been acknowledged as received correctly does not exceed the size of the burst sliding window. The burst sliding window size may reflect transmission capacity of the transmitting device and/or receipt capacity of the receiving devices.