MRouting

Abstract

Multicasting is a data distribution method that one or more sender send a data packet to many receivers located at various places in the network. Internet Multicast was first introduced in 1988 as a method to utilize the network resources more efficiently by ensuring that a packet traverses a link only once while its copies are being delivered to many receivers, but the development of this technology has been quite slow. As commercial sites such as broadcast.com start services utilizing IP multicast technology, the demand for IP multicast is increasing rapidly. For all the attention multicast has received, there are still issues that have not been completely resolved. One result is that protocols are still evolving, and some standards not yet finished. The Border Gateway Multicast Protocol (BGMP) has been proposed as a next-step inter-domain multicast routing protocol. BGMP, unlike current inter-domain multicast routing solutions, is the first protocol designed specifically for inter-domain environment and resolves many issues listed in other solutions. Although BGMP is under standardization process by Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) bgmp working group, no reference implementation of the protocol has been released. Reference implementation is a must in standardization process of an Internet protocol. Thorough testing and evaluation of the protocol must be preceded the standardization or the protocol in order to ensure the use of the protocol will not break or harm the current Internet. In this paper we design and implement MRouting, an Inter-domain multicast routing system, based on Border Gateway Multicast Protocol. This work provides the basis for validating the Border Gateway Multicast Protocol (BGMP).