Abstract: A group communication protocol has been proposed and implemented for the distributed network management system (MOVI: managed object view interface). To reduce protocol overhead, distributed and hierarchical approaches have been introduced: the group management function has been split into three functional entities. The first one is the local group manager (LCM) which manages one or more member(s) in one host. The second one is the group communication daemon (GCD) which supports the overlapped grouping facility in a single site. The last one is the global group manager (GGM) which controls one or more LCM(s) and GCD(s) and provides group communication over the whole network. The distributed network management system design has been based on the hierarchical domain approach. This group communication, therefore, has been designed with a hierarchical and distributed group management scheme.