Datagram routing for internet multicasting

Abstract

We present a solution to the problem of multidestination routing in internetworks. The component subnets of these internets share a common datagram internet layer, and the gateways and hosts can determine the next gateway en route to a foreign net. Our datagram routing offers high resilience to network failures, major reductions in network traffic, and no changes whatsoever to the subnetwork routing. The routing follows "shortest" paths as defined by the distance criteria of an internet. We intend to use the algorithm as an option of the DoD Internet Protocol with only minor changes to IP while preserving interoperability with IP modules not supporting multidestination.