Internet Multicasting Based on Group-Relative Addressing

We introduce the Addressable Internet Multicast (AIM) architecture, which extends the IP-multicast architecture with group-relative addressing information along multicast routing trees. AIM permits more e cient and sophisticated multicast routing options and encourages communication and cooperation between IP and higher-layer protocols. AIM enables sources to restrict the delivery of packets to a subset of the receivers in a multicast group on a per-packet basis. AIM also permits receivers to listen to subsets of sources on a subscription basis, and quick formation of new multicast groups de ned within the original routing tree. AIM also provides a versatile, scalable anycast service. This new approach encourages cooperation between layers, but maintains independence of operation, and works with any proposed multicast routing protocol. We also present the application of AIM to application-level and transport-level services, such as reliable multicast.