A multicast toolkit for distributed/peer-to-peer applications that require multicast communication. it includes the program emcast, a generic multicast utility (like netcat), and the library libemcast, a generic multicast library. emcast supports ipv4 multicast (im) and can easily support almost any end-host multicast (em) protocol. the em protocols supported are banana tree protocol (btp), internet chat relay (irc), and star (centralized tcp). emcast is pronounced em-cast.