A novel approach for topology-aware overlay multicasting

Abstract

Most existing overlay multicast approaches avoid to consider any network layer support no matter whether it is available or not. This design principle greatly increases the complexity of the routing algorithms and makes the overlay topologies incompatible with the underlying network. To address these issues, we propose TOMIMN as a novel overlay multicast approach, which exploits the cooperation between endhosts and IP multicast routers to construct a topology-aware overlay tree. Through a little modification to PIM-SM, a multicast router is able to receive registration from nearby group members and redirect passing-by join requests to them. Due to the multicast router’s support, TOMIMN organizes its group members into an overlay multicast tree efficiently, which matches the physical network topology well.