ATM multicasting and the CalRen testbed

I present the problems associated with ATM multicast communication and report various proposals of how to approach the problem. Perhaps the most fundamental problem with ATM multicasting is whether ATM can internetwork with IP transparently. IP multicasting is a connectionless oriented, receiver-initiated join mechanism; while ATM multicasting is a connection-oriented server-initiated join service. Two basic approaches exist for intrasubnet ATM multicasting, the 'VC (virtual circuit) mesh' approach and the MCS (multicast server) approach. This paper discusses a number of issues, including IP/ATM internetworking, IP/ATM LAN/WAN multicasting, and various experiments done on the CalREN testbed.