A Hybrid Network Architecture for Mobile Multimedia Group Conferencing based on SIP Initiated SSM

There is a rising interest on SIP initiated multimedia communication. The main reason is that contrasted with H.323, SIP is an exceedingly simple protocol. Designed to be a general-purpose way to set up real-time IP based multimedia sessions between groups of participants, SIP can also be used to set up (mobile) multimedia multicast meetings, conventionally by any source multicast (ASM) routing. ASM however seems to be hesitant to disseminate. The simpler mechanisms for group distribution in source specific multicast (SSM) seems to be more acceptable to many users of multicast infrastructure and services. SSM group session initiation up until now remains unsupported by the session initiation protocol (SIP).