Revisiting multicast on id/locator separation network

Multicasting is a way to deliver copies of single message to multiple recipients at different locations. On the traditional internet, group members join specific multicast address through membership management protocol and packets are delivered along the path tree built by multicast routing protocol. Now we consider how multicast communication can be designed in ID/locator separation environment. In this environment a common id as a group name can be used and it is shared by all group members, or a specific ID can be assigned to an anchor point and packets are distributed to the group members by the anchor point. In this paper we redefine groupcasting, and show how multicasting can be designed and implemented in ID/locator separation network environment.

I. Introduction

On the current internet, the role of IP address is locator. An IP address assigned to an interface would be changed if a host moves to a new location. From this point of view, IP multicast address is not a locator, but rather it is more like identifier. Hosts join any multicast addresses instead of assigning them to the interfaces. Delivering packets to the hosts which join any multicast addresses is done by the help of routers running multicast routing protocol and membership management protocol.