Optimizing multicast operation in Ethernet carrier networks

Ethernet has grown from its roots in LANs to cover large scale networks. A set of projects plan to enhance the features of Ethernet to be with carrier grade features like high availability, fault management, and resiliency found in other circuit switched technologies. Ethernet has been architected and designed for a shared medium, it inherently handles broadcast and multicast traffic by flooding of frames; this flooding may appear good in LANs but in MAN or WAN it could mean huge bandwidth wastages. This paper focuses on the multicast MAC address overlapping problem and explores new technique to address efficient multicasting in provider Metro Ethernet networks without wasting bandwidth measuring the performance of the network using OPNET simulator.