IP Multicast Applications: Challenges and Solutions
RFC 3170
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RFC - Informational
(September 2001; No errata)
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2013-03-02
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RFC 3170 (Informational)
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Network Working Group B. Quinn
Request for Comments: 3170 Celox Networks
Category: Informational K. Almeroth
UC-Santa Barbara
September 2001
IP Multicast Applications:
Challenges and Solutions
Status of this Memo
This memo provides information for the Internet community. It does
not specify an Internet standard of any kind. Distribution of this
memo is unlimited.
Copyright Notice
Copyright (C) The Internet Society (2001). All Rights Reserved.
Abstract
This document describes the challenges involved with designing and
implementing multicast applications. It is an introductory guide for
application developers that highlights the unique considerations of
multicast applications as compared to unicast applications.
To this end, the document presents a taxonomy of multicast
application I/O models and examples of the services they can support.
It then describes the service requirements of these multicast
applications, and the recent and ongoing efforts to build protocol
solutions to support these services.
Table of Contents
1. Introduction. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2
1.1 Motivation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2
1.2 Focus and Scope. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3
2. IP Multicast-enabled Network. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3
2.1 Essential Protocol Components. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4
2.1.1 Expedient Joins and Leaves . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5
2.1.2 Send without a Join. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5
3. IP Multicast Application Taxonomy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6
3.1 One-to-Many Applications . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8
3.2 Many-to-Many Applications. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9
3.3 Many-to-One Applications . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .10
4. Common Multicast Service Requirements . . . . . . . . . . . . .13
4.1 Bandwidth Requirements . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .13
Quinn, et al. Informational [Page 1]
RFC 3170 IP Multicast Applications September 2001
4.2 Delay Requirements . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .13
5. Unique Multicast Service Requirements . . . . . . . . . . . . .14
5.1 Address Management . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .16
5.2 Session Management . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .16
5.3 Heterogeneous Receiver Support . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .18
5.4 Reliable Data Delivery . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .20
5.5 Security . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .21
5.6 Synchronized Play-Out. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .23
6. Service APIs. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .23
7. Security Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .24
8. Acknowledgements. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .24
9. References. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .24
10. Authors' Addresses . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .27
11. Full Copyright Statement . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .28
1. Introduction
IP Multicast will play a prominent role on the Internet in the coming
years. It is a requirement, not an option, if the Internet is going
to scale. Multicast allows application developers to add more
functionality without significantly impacting the network.
Developing multicast-enabled applications is ostensibly simple.
Having datagram access allows any application to send to a multicast
address. A multicast application need only increase the Internet
Protocol (IP) time-to-live (TTL) value to more than 1 (the default
value) to allow outgoing datagrams to traverse routers. To receive a
multicast datagram, applications join the multicast group, which
transparently generates an [IGMPv2, IGMPv3] group membership report.
This apparent simplicity is deceptive, however. Enabling multicast
support in applications and protocols that can scale well on a
heterogeneous network is a significant challenge. Specifically,
sending constant bit rate datastreams, reliable data delivery,
security, and managing many-to-many communications all require
special consideration. Some solutions are available, but many of
these services are still active research areas.
1.1 Motivation
The purpose of this document is to provide a framework for
understanding the challenges of designing and implementing multicast
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