Security in Multicast Networks

Multicast networking support is becoming an increasingly important future technology area for group-based applications. Although the deployment of multicast networks has been picking up, the area of multicast security has not received much attention. The few proposals for securing multicast communication do not address the unique requirements arising from the multicast group communication model. Integrating a multicast security solution involves numerous engineering tradeoffs. The end goal of effective operational performance and scalability over a heterogeneous internetwork is of primary interest for widescale adoption and application of such a capability. In this paper, various techniques that have been proposed to support multicast security are discussed and their relative merits are explored.