A Reservation-Based Multicast (RBM) Routing Protocol for Mobile Networks: Initial Route Construction Phase*

We propose a combined multicast routing and resource reservation protocol, termed ReservationBased Multicast (RBM), that performs routing in a fashion similar to Protocol Independent Multicast (PIM), but which is intended for mobile operation and routes hierarchically-encoded data streams based on user-specified fidelity requirements, real-time delivery thresholds and prevailing network bandwidth constraints. The protocol retains the fully distributed operation, scalability and receiver-initiated orientation of PIM; but, unlike PIM, the protocol is tightly coupled to an underlying, distributed, unicast routing protocol thereby facilitating operation in a dynamic topology. This paper focuses on the initial route construction phase, assumed to occur during a static "snapshot" of the dynamic topology, and is therefore applicable to fixed networks as well, e.g. the Internet. A forthcoming paper will detail the protocol's robustness and adaptivity to arbitrary topological changes during both initial route construction and subsequent route maintenance and rediscovery.