The paper evaluates a simple, yet effective, application-layer multicast algorithm (AMUCAST) targeted to medium-scale applications with low-latency requirements. A distributed tree construction and maintenance mechanism combines metric measurement and link selection to produce consistent and self-adaptable trees. The paper presents results from an extensive simulation study that quantify the performance of the approach and experimental data collected on a network testbed. © 2011 Springer Science+Business Media B.V.