Dynamic cross-domain group communication in hybrid multicast networks

Abstract

Group communication based on multicast enables efficient one-to-many and many-to-many distribution of real-time data. Multicast communication would therefore be beneficial to popular Internet applications such as IPTV, online multiplayer games and audio/video conferencing, and is considered as an important network service for future CCN/ICN architectures. However, multicast exists in many flavors and technologies, and on different network layers with incompatible application interfaces and divergent states of deployment. Due to these challenges of multicast plurality, there is no multicast service available on the Internet today. In this paper, we present a dynamic and technology-transparent group communication scheme by names. We extend HAMcast -- a hybrid multicast architecture -- with a mapping service between technology dependent addressing and an abstract naming. Therefore we show in detail the required components and discuss possible solutions.