SPAM: a data forwarding model for multipoint-to-multipoint connection support in ATM networks

Many distributed multimedia applications involve data delivery from a source to multiple destinations, the participating nodes forming a multicast group. In the naive solution, separate connections can be established from each source to other group members. However a tree can be established for each source with the participants as the leaf nodes or just have one tree spanning all the participants. In this paper, we introduce the data forwarding model to support such shared multicast trees over the ATM networks called SPAM (a Simple Protocol for ATM Multicast). The authors work allow the wide area multicast protocols (like CBT and PIM) to be supported in ATM networks. Further, SPAM improves the error detection and allows for leaf initiated join of UNI 4.0.