mDNS - A Proposal for Hierarchical Multicast Session Directory Architecture

Bandwidth in the Internet is constantly increasing. The last mile problem of the Internet has almost been solved. Multimedia has emerged as the favorite mode of information dispersal on the net. Multicast is increasingly being seen as the vehicle of choice for multimedia streams. What has been the one true stumbling roadblock in widespread deployment is the lack of DNS like structure for multicast session discovery. In this paper we look into some of the existing techniques that tries to address this issue, find out benefits and drawbacks of such schemes. We will propose our hierarchical and globally scalable sessions directory architecture. This will be followed by analysis of benefits and drawbacks in our scheme and why our scheme might be generally more suitable for global deployment which may allow end users to enjoy the true power and efficiency of IP multicast.