A Scalable Core Migration Protocol for Dynamic Multicast Tree

In past years, researchers have proposed the Core Based Tree (CBT) and Protocol Independent Multicast (PIM) protocols to route multicast data on the Internet. Such protocols need to locate the Core of a group to achieve efficient multicast routing. In this paper, we propose a scalable distributed protocol that can be used to move the Core to near-optimal location in the dynamic multicast tree, and that allows the Core to migrate efficiently when the multicast tree is expanded or shrunk. Our protocol does not require knowledge of the complete network topology, and information of all the members is distributed among local Agents; the Core only maintains the information of Agents of the group. Also, only the Agents participate in Core selection. Therefore, the proposed protocol reduces the runtime overhead and message complexity while performing Core migration.