IP multicast content delivery system for large-scale applications

Various multicast applications and transmission control protocols have a common requirement of content-based transmission. The Internet applications manage a large and widely-dispersed set of users, have multiple data streams that vary in content and media type, and make use of multiple unicast and multicast streams in a single session. The current IP multicast service and architecture do not efficiently support large-scale applications and related transmission control protocols. We propose a framework to model the characteristics of large-scale applications and protocols and their network support. We examine two currently available techniques to scope delivery of content to interested receivers in IP multicast: filtering, where data is filtered by middleware before passed to the application, and addressing, where data is routed only to those receivers that express their interest. We use this framework to evaluate the performance of these applications and related protocols when the network is capable of filtering or addressing.