SMRM: SNMP-based multicast reachability monitoring

One of the main challenges of deploying multicast services in the Internet is the lack of active monitoring tools that can detect and isolate multicast reachability problems in real-time. Existing multicast monitoring tools are either not scalable or use proprietary protocols which limit their deployment in enterprise networks. This paper presents SNMP-based multicast reachability monitoring (SMRM), a framework for monitoring the health and the quality of multicast delivery paths (or forwarding tree) in real-time. SMRM addresses these limitations by using SNMP as a core component, which significantly facilitates the wide deployment of SMRM in existing networks. The SMRM framework combines distributed monitoring and centralized control, which offers a scalable, easy-to-use and easy-to-deploy multicast monitoring service.