A Common API for Transparent Hybrid Multicast
draft-irtf-samrg-common-api-04
SAM Research Group M. Waehlisch
Internet-Draft link-lab & FU Berlin
Intended status: Informational T C. Schmidt
Expires: July 30, 2012 HAW Hamburg
S. Venaas
cisco Systems
January 27, 2012
A Common API for Transparent Hybrid Multicast
draft-irtf-samrg-common-api-04
Abstract
Group communication services exist in a large variety of flavors, and
technical implementations at different protocol layers. Multicast
data distribution is most efficiently performed on the lowest
available layer, but a heterogeneous deployment status of multicast
technologies throughout the Internet requires an adaptive service
binding at runtime. Today, it is difficult to write an application
that runs everywhere and at the same time makes use of the most
efficient multicast service available in the network. Facing
robustness requirements, developers are frequently forced to use a
stable, upper layer protocol provided by the application itself.
This document describes a common multicast API that is suitable for
transparent communication in underlay and overlay, and grants access
to the different multicast flavors. It proposes an abstract naming
by multicast URIs and discusses mapping mechanisms between different
namespaces and distribution technologies. Additionally, it describes
the application of this API for building gateways that interconnect
current multicast domains throughout the Internet.
Status of this Memo
This Internet-Draft is submitted in full conformance with the
provisions of BCP 78 and BCP 79.
Internet-Drafts are working documents of the Internet Engineering
Task Force (IETF). Note that other groups may also distribute
working documents as Internet-Drafts. The list of current Internet-
Drafts is at http://datatracker.ietf.org/drafts/current/.
Internet-Drafts are draft documents valid for a maximum of six months
and may be updated, replaced, or obsoleted by other documents at any
time. It is inappropriate to use Internet-Drafts as reference
material or to cite them other than as "work in progress."
This Internet-Draft will expire on July 30, 2012.
Waehlisch, et al. Expires July 30, 2012 [Page 1]
Internet-Draft Common Mcast API January 2012
Copyright Notice
Copyright (c) 2012 IETF Trust and the persons identified as the
document authors. All rights reserved.
This document is subject to BCP 78 and the IETF Trust's Legal
Provisions Relating to IETF Documents
(http://trustee.ietf.org/license-info) in effect on the date of
publication of this document. Please review these documents
carefully, as they describe your rights and restrictions with respect
to this document. Code Components extracted from this document must
include Simplified BSD License text as described in Section 4.e of
the Trust Legal Provisions and are provided without warranty as
described in the Simplified BSD License.
Table of Contents
1. Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4
1.1. Use Cases for the Common API . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5
1.2. Illustrative Example . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6
2. Terminology . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8
3. Overview . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9
3.1. Objectives and Reference Scenarios . . . . . . . . . . . . 9
3.2. Group Communication API & Protocol Stack . . . . . . . . . 10
3.3. Naming and Addressing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12
3.4. Namespaces . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13
3.4.1. Generic Namespaces . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13
3.4.2. Application-centric Namespaces . . . . . . . . . . . . 14
3.5. Name-to-Address Mapping . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14
3.5.1. Canonical Mapping . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15
3.5.2. Mapping at End Points . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15
3.5.3. Mapping at Interdomain Multicast Gateways . . . . . . 15
4. Common Multicast API . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15
4.1. Notation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15
4.2. Abstract Data Types . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15
4.2.1. Multicast URI . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16
4.2.2. Interface . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16
4.2.3. Membership Events . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17
4.3. Group Management Calls . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17
Show full document text