Internet Multicast Video Delivery

Internet video delivery has been motivating research in multicast routing, quality of service (QoS), and the service model of the Internet itself for the last 15 years. Multicast delivery has the potential to deliver a large amount of content that currently cannot be delivered through broadcast. IP and overlay multicast are two architectures proposed to provide multicast support. A large body of research has been done with IP multicast and QoS mechanisms for IP multicast since the late 1980s. In the past five years, overlay multicast research has gained momentum with a vision to accomplish ubiquitous multicast delivery that is efficient and scales in the dimensions of the number of groups, number of receivers, and number of senders. This work presents an overview of the issues facing both IP and overlay multicast and the approaches that researchers are taking to solve them. Many of these approaches take advantage of a rich interface, beyond a single rate video stream, between the coding and delivery mechanisms. The semantics of this interface is an important question for future research and we discuss this with insight from experience on delivery technologies.     

基于EPON的可控组播技术

以太无源光网络( EPON)作为光纤到户的理想解决方案之一,凭借其带宽优势非常适合承载组播业务.EPON可控组播技术结合EPON的特点,从安全性和可维护性考虑,提出了一套可控组播实现方案,包括组播源管理、用户认证和组播流量控制等内容,以满足组播业务可维、可控的运营管理需要.     

Overlay,Borůvka‐based,Ad‐hoc multicast Protocol: description and performance analysis

This paper presents a novel Mobile Ad‐hoc NETworks (MANET) multicast protocol, named Overlay Borůvka‐based Ad‐hoc Multicast Protocol (OBAMP), and evaluates its performance. OBAMP is an overlay protocol: it runs only in the end‐systems belonging to the multicast group. OBAMP has three distinctive features, which give to the protocol a good performance in terms of distribution efficiency: (i) its distribution tree closely resembles the minimum spanning tree; (ii) it exploits broadcast communications; (iii) its design limits not only overlay signaling but also network‐layer signaling. In addition, OBAMP can cope with node failures in a very short time. As a consequence, OBAMP has a low latency and a high delivery ratio, even when the group size increases. To prove these statements, we analyze the performance of OBAMP with ns‐2 and compare it with three state‐of‐the‐art protocols, namely ODMRP (a network‐layer protocol), ALMA, and AMRoute (two overlay protocols). The overlay protocols are assumed to use AODV as underlying routing protocol. Also, we stress that we have implemented OBAMP, in Java, and we have tested it on the field, to prove its feasibility; to allow fellow researchers to reproduce and test our work we published all simulation and implementation codes. Copyright © 2007 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

AMRoute: Ad Hoc Multicast Routing Protocol

The Ad hoc Multicast Routing protocol (AMRoute) presents a novel approach for robust IP Multicast in mobile ad hoc networks by exploiting user-multicast trees and dynamic logical cores. It creates a bidirectional, shared tree for data distribution using only group senders and receivers as tree nodes. Unicast tunnels are used as tree links to connect neighbors on the user-multicast tree. Thus, AMRoute does not need to be supported by network nodes that are not interested/capable of multicast, and group state cost is incurred only by group senders and receivers. Also, the use of tunnels as tree links implies that tree structure does not need to change even in case of a dynamic network topology, which reduces the signaling traffic and packet loss. Thus AMRoute does not need to track network dynamics; the underlying unicast protocol is solely responsible for this function. AMRoute does not require a specific unicast routing protocol; therefore, it can operate seamlessly over separate domains with different unicast protocols. Certain tree nodes are designated by AMRoute as logical cores, and are responsible for initiating and managing the signaling component of AMRoute, such as detection of group members and tree setup. Logical cores differ significantly from those in CBT and PIM-SM, since they are not a central point for data distribution and can migrate dynamically among member nodes. Simulation results (using ns-2) demonstrate that AMRoute signaling traffic remains at relatively low level for typical group sizes. The results also indicate that group members receive a high proportion of data multicast by senders, even in the case of a highly dynamic network.     

Lightweight PIM—a new multicast routing protocol

Multicast holds out great promise to significantly reduce network load between the sender and a group of receivers by delivering a single data stream to many recipients. Protocol‐Independent Multicast (PIM) Sparse Mode and its variant PIM Source‐Specific Multicast (PIM SSM) are the most widely used IP multicast protocols. Protocols offer low latency data delivery capabilities with relatively high reliability and are characterized by large signaling overhead. This article presents a new multicast protocol, called Lightweight PIM (LPIM), tackling the main problem hindering widespread usage of IP multicast protocols, which is a large volume of signaling traffic. Given the existing usability of the PIM family protocols, a decision was made to base the new LPIM protocol on PIM SSM. The improvements used in LPIM lead to a considerable reduction of state data and signaling messages required by LPIM as compared with PIM SSM. Similar to its predecessor, LPIM is capable of handling large groups, although with significantly lower overhead. Copyright © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Multicast routing and bandwidth dimensioning in overlay networks

Multicast services can be provided either as a basic network service or as an application-layer service. Higher level multicast implementations often provide more sophisticated features and can provide multicast services at places where no network layer support is available. Overlay multicast networks offer an intermediate option, potentially combining the flexibility and advanced features of application layer multicast with the greater efficiency of network layer multicast. In this paper, we introduce the multicast routing problem specific to the overlay network environment and the related capacity assignment problem for overlay network planning. Our main contributions are the design of several routing algorithms that optimize the end-to-end delay and the interface bandwidth usage at the multicast service nodes within the overlay network. The interface bandwidth is typically a key resource for an overlay network provider, and needs to be carefully managed in order to maximize the number of users that can be served. Through simulations, we evaluate the performance of these algorithms under various traffic conditions and on various network topologies. The results show that our approach is cost-effective and robust under traffic variations.     

Modeling and optimization of maximum flow survivable overlay multicast with predefined routing trees

Overlay networks employ underlying network technologies in order to provide end-system related communication and over the years overlays have been getting more and more attention in research community and in business world as well. Since overlays tackle many drawbacks present in pure “link-router-network” engineering, they have become an excellent solution for multimedia-oriented applications. A good example comprises multicast communications, where an overlay system, in contrast to IP Multicast, eliminates many issues related to scalability or management control. This paper focuses on modeling and optimization of overlay multicast networks aimed at realizing maximum throughput with survivability constraints, where survivability defines the ability of a multicast system to limit potential throughput losses in case of a failure of single virtual link. We present linear formulation derived from fractional tree packing problems based on predefined topologies which may route multicast traffic. Linear model might be used for obtaining optimal multicast structures, however its applicability is limited by increasing sizes of networks. Hence, we also design and evaluate heuristic searches dedicated to optimization of maximum flow survivable overlay multicast networks.     

IP组播技术在远程教育中的应用

IP组播是一种允许一个或多个发送者发送单一的数据包到多个接收者的网络技术,特别适用于远程教育,能够有效地解决目前国内远程教育交互性差的问题,同时最大限度地降低服务器和网络负载,节省成本.本文介绍了IP组播技术的基本概念,对IP组播技术在视频会议系统中的应用提出了合理建议,对基于IP组播技术的远程教育网络的设计提供了可行方案.     

大型IP网络中组播部署方案研究

近年来随着互联网用户数量的高速增长,网络多媒体应用的普及带来了IP网络带宽的急剧消耗,组播技术以其独特的优越性受到运营商的关注.然而,目前组播技术的使用仍然局限在少数小型网络中,组播部署缺少系统化、整体化的解决方案.本文介绍了一些关键的组播技术,在此基础上针对大型IP网络中的组播部署方案进行探讨,提出组播端到端的解决方案,并通过实验证明了该部署方案的可行性.     

IP多路广播在推广中存在的问题

IP多路广播是提高网络资源利用率的有效途径，其实验网Mbone已经运行多年，然而商业推广却十分缓慢。文章分析IP多路广播在访问控制、地址分配、可靠性、安全性、QoS和商业运营方面存在的问题，并总结IP多路广播的发展趋势。     

移动自组织网络中基于树结构的优化组播路由算法(英)

Mobile Ad hoc Networks(MANETs) play an important role in emergency communications where network needs to be constructed temporarily and quickly.Since the nodes move randomly,routing protocols must be highly effective and reliable to guarantee successful packet delivery.Based on the data delivery structure,most of the existing multicast routing protocols can be classified into two folders:tree-based and mesh-based.We observe that tree-based ones have high forwarding efficiency and low consumptions of bandwidth,and they may have poor robustness because only one link exists between two nodes.As a treebased multicast routing protocol,MAODV(Multicast Ad hoc On-demand Vector) shows an excellent performance in lightweight ad hoc networks.As the load of network increases,QoS(Quality of Service) is degraded obviously.In this paper,we analyze the impact of network load on MAODV protocol,and propose an optimized protocol MAODV-BB(Multicast Ad hoc On-demand Vector with Backup Branches),which improves robustness of the MAODV protocol by combining advantages of the tree structure and the mesh structure.It not only can update shorter tree branches but also construct a multicast tree with backup branches.Mathematical analysis and simulation results both demonstrate that the MAODV-BB protocol improves the network performance over conventional MAODV in heavy load ad hoc networks.     

Explicit Multicast Extension (Xcast+) for Efficient Multicast Packet Delivery

In this letter, we propose a new multicast scheme, named Xcast+, which is an extension of Explicit Multicast (Xcast) for an efficient delivery of multicast packets. The mechanism incorporates the host group model and a new control plane into existing Xcast, and not only does it provide the transparency of traditional multicast schemes to senders and receivers, but it also enhances the routing efficiency in networks. Since intermediate routers do not have to maintain any multicast states, it results in a more efficient and scalable mechanism to deliver multicast packets. Our simulation results show distinct performance improvements of our approach compared to Xcast, particularly as the number of receivers in a subnet increases.     

Stateless overlay multicast with in-packet bloom filters

Due to the difficulty of deploying Internet protocol (IP) multicast on the Internet on a large scale, overlay multicast has been considered as a promising alternative to develop the multicast communication in recent years. However, the existing overlay multicast solutions suffer from high costs to maintain the state information of nodes in the multicast forwarding tree. A stateless overlay multicast scheme is proposed, in which the multicast routing information is encoded by a bloom filter (BF) and encapsulated into the packet header without any need for maintaining the multicast forwarding tree. Our scheme leverages the node heterogeneity and proximity information in the physical topology and hierarchically constructs the transit-stub overlay topology by assigning geometric coordinates to all overlay nodes. More importantly, the scheme uses BF technology to identify the nodes and links of the multicast forwarding tree, which improves the forwarding efficiency and decreases the false-positive forwarding loop. The analytical and simulation results show that the proposal can achieve high forwarding efficiency and good scalability.     

安全多播准入控制系统的研究与实现

安全问题一直是多播技术发展中一个亟待解决的问题,而在所有的安全问题中,安全多播准入控制是研究的焦点.研究了国内外现有的典型多播准入控制方案,对它们的优缺点进行了分析和比较研究.结合各种多播准入控制方案的优点,给出了一个基于IGMP协议的安全多播准入控制方案.实验表明该安全多播准入控制方案具有安全性高、稳定性好、扩展性好、易于迁移到IPv6环境和便于部署等特点,有较高的实际应用价值.     

基于卫星网络的IP组播技术

IP组播技术是新兴的网络技术,依托卫星网络的组播业务更是下一代Internet为用户提供的主流服务。文章详细介绍IP组播技术,对其在卫星网络应用中存在的主要问题、解决方法及常用的卫星组播网络拓扑结构进行阐述和分析。     

Security issues and solutions in multicast content distribution: a survey

Multicast enables efficient large-scale content distribution by providing an efficient transport mechanism for one-to-many and many-to-many communication. The very properties that make multicast attractive, however, also make it a challenging environment in which to provide content security. We show how the fundamental properties of the multicast paradigm cause security issues and vulnerabilities. We focus on four areas of research in security for multicast content distribution: receiver access control, group key management, multicast source authentication, and multicast fingerprinting. For each we explain the vulnerabilities, discuss the objectives of solutions, and survey work in the area. Also, we briefly highlight other security issues in multicast content distribution including source access control, secure multicast routing, and group policy specification. We then outline several future research directions.     

IP组播技术在VOD系统中的应用

组播通信可以有效地减轻网络负担，避免资源浪费，是一种十分有效的通信方式。简要介绍IP组播技术的概念、原理及体系结构，描述IGMP Snooping协议在VOD系统中的应用，在此基础上设计基于IP组播技术的VOD系统。     

Challenges and opportunities of delivering IP-based residential television services

This article describes the main challenges of implementing an end-to-end architecture for delivery of high-quality, IP-based residential TV services to residential customers. The IP-based approach can be implemented with an IP multicast overlay network with traditional routers or use IP-multicast-aware ATM switching systems. Both approaches use IP multicast to transport MPEG-2 broadcast video and can work on any access architecture, especially on copper-based architectures (xDSL) such as ASDL and VDSL. The main challenges met while implementing the IP-based architecture are competitive positioning relative to traditional CATV architectures, overall architecture, head-end architecture and quality issues, traffic engineering for stringent QoS requirements, IP multicast requirements, and business case considerations. The IP-based approach described leverages Internet technology advancements and capitalizes on the impacts of Internet on interactive entertainment. Video channel manipulation at the head-end is dependent on access bandwidth and affects video quality. Video traffic management to meet stringent QoS requirements is challenging at the IP layer. High-capacity, responsive IP multicasting is essential to achieving high service quality. Cost-effective IP multicasting is a critical component of the business case.