Multicast Routing and Its Protocols

In the age of multimedia and high-speed networks, multicast is one of the mechanisms by which the power of the Internet can be further harnessed in an efficient manner. When more than one receiver is interested in receiving a transmission from a single or a set of senders, multicast is the most efficient and viable mechanism. In the protocol stack of the network, multicast is best implemented in the network layer in the form of a multicast routing protocol to select the best path for the transmission. The other layers of the protocol stack provide additional features for multicast. Group communication and network multimedia applications are becoming more and more popular. These applications set new demands on the quality of network resources such as bandwidth or latency. While these resources are usually very limited, good multicast routing will be more and more important as networks and the number of users continues to grow. In this paper, we discuss about the multicast routing that provide more quality. First, an overview of routing and its design considerations, discussing several key features in routing. Multicasting, as it is an important topic to cover, is explained stating definitions, requirements and applications. Differences between general multicast trees, functional overview are highlighted. Also some well-known multicast routing protocols are covered.