Implementation and evaluation of MPLS multicast mechanism considering deployment in established MPLS networks

There has recently been much discussion of MPLS multicast approaches. MMT and BLAST-Cast have been proposed as means of establishing multicast LSP using unicast LSP. These techniques are useful not only as transfer techniques in introducing the MPLS multicast technique, but also for the deployment of MPLS multicasting in established MPLS networks, since the scale can be expanded stepwise, and the cost of deployment and operation can be reduced in the deployment of MPLS multicast in established MPLS networks. However, there have been few studies of the detailed signaling protocol to be used in such an approach, or of problems accompanying these techniques. Consequently, we investigated a signaling protocol that can be applied to these approaches, and devised an MPLS multicast mechanism using RSVP-TE. The proposed mechanism was implemented and evaluated. This paper discusses the design and implementation of the proposed mechanism, together with its evaluation. © 2007 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Electron Comm Jpn Pt 3, 90(11): 40–49, 2007; Published online in Wiley InterScience (www.interscience.wiley.com). DOI 10.1002/ecjc.20354