While the advantages of multicast delivery over multiple unicast deliveries is undeniable, the deployment of the IP multicast protocol has been limited to "islands" of network domains under single administrative control. Deployment of inter-domain multicast delivery has been slow due to both technical and administrative reasons. In this paper we propose a Host Multicast Tree Protocol (HMTP) that (1) automates the interconnection of IP-multicast enabled islands and (2) provides multicast delivery to end hosts where IP multicast is not available. With HMTP, end-hosts and proxy gateways of IP multicast-enabled islands can dynamically create shared multicast trees across different islands. Members of an HMTP multicast group self-organize into an efficient, scalable and robust multicast tree. The tree structure is adjusted periodically to accommodate changes in group membership and network topology. Simulation results show that the multicast tree has low cost, and data delivered over it experiences moderately low latency. I.

We consider the problem of finding nearby application-peers (close friends) over the Internet. We focus on unicast-only solutions and introduce a new scheme -- Beaconing -- for finding peers that are near. Our scheme uses distance measurement points (called beacons) and can be implemented entirely in the application-layer without investing in large infrastructure changes. We present an extensive evaluation...

This paper presents a system, called mTunnel, for application level tunneling of IPmulticast traffic in a lightweight manner, where the end-user is responsible for deciding which MBone-sessions and which IP-multicast groups to tunnel. mTunnel has primarily been designed for easy deployment and easy-to-manage tunneling. Information about currently tunneled sessions and control of mTunnel is provided through a Web-interface. To save bandwidth, tunneled streams can be transcoded on the data-level; and traffic sent through the tunnel can be compressed by grouping several packets together and using statistical compression. The overall bandwidth reduction achieved can be between 5 and 14 % depending on the traffic type.

MarconiNet is an architecture for IP-based radio and TV networks, built on standard Internet protocols including RTP, RTSP, SAP, and SDP. It allows to build virtual radio networks, similar to traditional AM/FM radio and TV networks. It addresses some of the practical problems of building Internet radio networks, including the insertion of local content and advertising. 1

While the advantages of multicast delivery over multiple unicast deliveries is undeniable, the deployment of the IP multicast protocol has been limited to "islands" of network domains under single administrative control. Deployment of inter-domain multicast delivery has been slow due to both technical and administrative reasons. In this paper we propose a Host Multicast Tree Protocol (HMTP) that (1) automates the interconnection of IP-multicast enabled islands and (2) provides multicast delivery to end hosts where IP multicast is not available. With HMTP, end-hosts and proxy gateways of IP multicast-enabled islands can dynamically create shared multicast trees across different islands. Members of an HMTP multicast group self-organize into an efficient, scalable and robust multicast tree. The tree structure is adjusted periodically to accommodate changes in group membership and network topology. Simulation results show that the multicast tree has low cost, and data delivered over it experiences moderately low latency. I.

Many organizations use a firewall computer that acts as a security gateway between the public Internet and their private, internal 'intranet'. In this document, we discuss the issues surrounding the traversal of IP multicast traffic across a firewall, and describe possible ways in which a firewall can implement and control this traversal. We also explain why some firewall mechanisms - such as SOCKS - that were designed specifically for unicast traffic, are less appropriate for multicast.

We consider the problem of finding nearby applicationpeers (close friends) over the Internet. We focus on unicastonly solutions and introduce a new scheme —Beaconing— for finding peers that are near. Our scheme uses distance measurement points (called beacons) and can be implemented entirely in the application-layer without investing in large infrastructure changes. We present an extensive evaluation of Beaconing and compare it to existing schemes including Expanding Ring searches and Triangulation. Our experiments show that 3– 8 beacons are sufficient to provide efficient peer-location service on 10 000 node Internet-like topologies. Further, our results are 2–5 times more accurate than existing techniques. We also present results from an implementation of Beaconing over a non-trivial wide-area testbed. In our experiments, Beaconing is able to efficiently (< 3 K Bytes and < 50 packets on average), quickly (< 1 second on average), and accurately (< 20 ms error on average) find nearby peers on the Internet. 1.