PIM-SM Security: Interdomain Issues and Solutions

Abstract

IP multicast is growing to be the future vehicle of delivery for multimedia voice/video/text in the Internet to its millions of connected users. With PIM emerging as the multicast routing protocol standard in the networking industry, and more specifically PIM-SM (Sparse Mode) for multicasting to sparse groups, the security of PIM rt:presents a crucial factor for the successful wide deployment of IP multicast in the Internet. The current work argues that the authentication-key arrangement for PIMv2 [1] from the PIM WG is insufficient for interdomain authentication of PIM control-messages. The paper analyses some of the deficiencies of the PIM WG proposal, and offers some solutions to these shortcomings, whilst maintaining the key arrangement proposed by the PIM WG.