Design, implementation and evaluation of source-specific multicast system over IPv6 networks

Currently, most IP multicasting applications are implemented based on any-source multicast (ASM) model that supports many-to-many multicast services. However, it is known that current ASM-based multicast architecture has several deployment problems such as scalability and lack of access control. The source-specific multicast (SSM) working group in IETF has suggested SSM architecture which is based on one-to-many multicast service model in order to overcome the weaknesses of ASM architecture. In order to encourage the deployment of SSM, we need an effective and accurate implementation of SSM capable router and host on easily available platforms such as Linux and FreeBSD. We describe the key design and implementation features of our SSM capable router and host, applied to Linux 2.4.21 kernel. Then, we report the packet forwarding performance of SSM router. The forwarding performance of our implementation shows 95% of wire speed, when the packet length is IPv6 minimum path MTU.