Admission Control in IP Multicast over Heterogeneous Access Networks

Network operators have been reluctant to deploy IP multicast services mainly due to the lack of native control over multicast groups. This lack of control does not only prevent operators from generating revenue from multicast-based services but also hinders regular network management. In this work we identified the network elements where admission control should be enforced for multicast sessions spawning over heterogeneous access networks. The architecture proposed uses existing AAA functionality to perform user identification and multicast session admission control. This control is made at the network layer with no protocol modifications. Three access networks were considered: xDSL, WiMAX and UMTS.