mMOM: Efficient Mobile Multicast Support Based on the Mobility of Mobile Hosts

The IETF Mobile IP is the dominant standard for IP mobility support and defines two multicast options for providing multicast to mobile hosts (MHs): remote subscription (RS) and bi-directional tunneling (BT). Since the two options have complementary advantages, improved multicast support can be achieved by combining the two options. In this paper, in order to synthesize the strong points of the two options, we propose a new approach, mMOM, which selectively uses two IETF multicast options based on the mobility pattern of MHs. In mMOM, the RS option is used only when MH is looked upon as being relatively immobile. Otherwise, the BT option is used. Therefore, an optimal routing path is provided for as a long time as possible, so the multicast tree management overhead can be greatly reduced. For performance analysis, we use a new analytical model based on queuing theory. Based on analytical results, the multicast tree management overhead and the expected number of tunneling paths are taken as metrics for performance comparison. This analytical model and results can help multicast service providers to analyze cost effectiveness and to design new protocols for supporting mobile multicast.