Source specific multicast (SSM) group management analysis framework for the next generation mobile Internet

Source specific multicast (SSM) is the most promising and realistic group communication architecture on the Internet to date. Mobile IPv6 capability and pervasive wireless access will enable and further encourage personal electronic devices to rely on the Internet for communications. Consequently, we are likely to witness an increase of broadcast-like and peer-to-peer multimedia applications designed for mobile networks and devices. Multicast, especially the source specific multicast architecture, is an advantageous delivery mechanism for such applications in bandwidth constrained environments. Although SSM is an efficient and scalable architecture, there exists many issues to be resolved prior to successful large scale deployment. For example, the performance of SSM applications over mobile networks has not been well researched to date. In this paper, we present our analysis framework to investigate multicast listener discovery version 2 (MLDv2) characteristics. We want to determine the effects and results of tuning various parameters for group management made available by the IETF specification. Our eventual study aims to incorporate and analyse all the relevant protocols for SSM MIPv6 and provide a reference for IP engineers intending to deploy such services.