Supporting multicast in ADSL networks

Abstract

In this paper different approaches to support multicast in ADSL networks are discussed and compared in terms of scalability, performance and implementation effort. Existing approaches, such as the multicast gateway or RAS replication, have the advantage of easy implementation, but suffer from undesirable scaling properties and low performance. On the other hand, more scalable solutions, such as MARS/MCS, rely on SVCs, which are currently not available in ADSL-based broadband networks. Thus, so far there is no solution based on currently available PVC operation providing a good performance. In order to cover this need, we propose a new architecture: multicast over PVC. This architecture, besides providing good performance, gives the possibility of an easy migration towards future SVC operation.