Abstract

Internet, the largest network of networks has evolved from a research-oriented network to one with a myriad number of commercial applications. Over the last several years, there has been an explosion in the introduction of new Internet technologies with high-end workstations being engaged in real-time and multimedia communications like video conferencing, IP telephony, streaming video broadcast, online gaming etc. Supporting both the legacy services like email, file transfer and real-time multimedia like video conferencing requires service differentiation of Internet traffic. Moreover, multipoint communication requires implementation of multicast services. Two of the emerging technologies for service differentiation in multipoint communication are Differentiated Services (DiffServ) and multicasting. Although the two technologies share complementary goals, the integration of the two technologies is a non-trivial issue due to three fundamental problems. The problems are the scalability of per-group state information, sender- versus receiver-driven QoS, and resource management. The issues surrounding how to solve these problems provide the basis for this thesis. Edge Based Multicast (EdgeCast)--has been proposed here to satisfy the requirements for scalable DiffServ multicasting architectures. In addition it also presents a new join/leave protocol to support the EdgeCast architecture. Performance simulation has been done and compared with some already developed techniques. Finally, the whole work has been summarized and comments have been made on future applications of the architecture and several potential areas for future research.