Architecture for IP Multicast Deployment: Challenges and Practice

Hitoshi ASAEDA  Shinsuke SUZUKI  Katsushi KOBAYASHI  Jun MURAI 

Publication
IEICE TRANSACTIONS on Communications  Vol.E89-B  No.4  pp.1044-1051
Publication Date: 2006/04/01
Online ISSN: 1745-1345
Print ISSN: 0916-8516
Type of Manuscript: Special Section PAPER (Special Section on Internet Technology VI)
Category: INVITED
Keyword: 
IP multicast,  Source-Specific Multicast,  multicast statistics,  M6Bone, 

Full Text: PDF

Summary: 
IP multicast technology is highly advantageous for various applications and future needs in the Internet. Yet, it is generally recognized that the IP multicast routing protocol is fairly complex and non-scalable and requires additional maintenance and operational cost to network administrators. Although there has been much research related to IP multicast and most router vendors already support basic IP multicast routing protocols, there is still a big gap between what is reported as the state-of-the-art in the literature from what is implemented in practice. In this paper, we clarify the complexities of traditional multicast communication and describe possible solutions using the one-to-many multicast communication model called Source-Specific Multicast (SSM). We explain this communication model and the corresponding routing architecture and examine the statistics obtained for the number of multicast routing entries in our backbone router, which is connected to the international backbone. We also introduce our international collaboration activities that are contributing to the deployment and promotion of IP multicast services in the Internet.