Resource Management and Signalling Architecture of a Hybrid Multicast Service for Multimedia Distribution

This paper further develops an architecture and design elements for a resource management and a signalling system to support the construction and maintenance of a mid-long term hybrid multicast tree for multimedia distribution services in a QoS guaranteed way, over multiple IP domains. The system called E-cast is composed of an overlay part – in inter-domain and possible IP level multicast in intra-domain. Each E-cast tree is associated with a given QoS class and is composed of unicast pipes established through Service Level Specification negotiations between the domain managers. The paper continues a previous work, by proposing an inter-domain signalling system to support the multicast management and control operations and then defining the resource management for tree construction and adjustment procedures in order to assure the required static and dynamic properties of the tree.