Title: IP Multicast: Technology Ripe for Misuse

Speaker: Dr. Paul Stirpe

Abstract:

IP multicast is an emerging wide area network technology that provides
information dissemination from one sender to many receivers. IP multicast
channels or pathways are enabled via a combination of the LAN-based
Internet Group Management Protocol (IGMP) working in concert with
multicast
routing protocols, the latter of which there are several variants.
Reliable multicast transport protocols and in general, multicast
applications need to be carefully designed to make efficient use of the
underlying IP multicast technology. Academia has proposed several
protocols, including Scalable Reliable Multicast (a reliable multicast
transport protocol), and RTCP (Realtime Transport Control Protocol) that
can result in great inefficiencies in the underlying IP Multicast routing
technology. The result of such oversights is shown to be either
devastating
to the overall performance of the entire network, or provide unexpected
behavior. In this talk, IP multicast is introduced and the Internet
multicast architecture direction is outlined. Several examples of
technology misuse are detailed.