A reservation-based multicast (RBM) routing protocol for mobile networks: initial route construction phase

We propose a combined multicast routing, resource reservation and admission control protocol, termed Reservation-Based Multicast (RBM), that borrows the Rendezvous Point or Core concept from multicast routing algorithms proposed for the Internet, but which is intended for operation in mobile networks and routes hierarchically-encoded data streams based on user-specified fidelity requirements, real-time delivery thresholds and prevailing network bandwidth constraints. The protocol exhibits the fully distributed operation and receiver-initiated orientation of these proposed algorithms; but, unlike them, the protocol is tightly coupled to a class of underlying, distributed, unicast routing protocols thereby facilitating operation in a dynamic topology. This paper focuses on the initial route construction phase, assumed to occur during a static snapshot of the dynamic topology, and is therefore applicable to fixed networks as well, e.g. the Internet.This work was sponsored by the U.S. Navy and the American Society for Engineering Education under the U.S. Navy's Summer Faculty Research Program.Each application must specify a mechanism for ensuring that a processor is always aware of its associated entities. For example, in the current Internet architecture, a group membership protocol 2] serves a similar function of keeping routers informed of the membership their directly attached subnetworks.A processor can be viewed as either an IP router or an ATM switch.