MULTICAST NETWORK CONNECTION ARCHITECTURE

IBM Networking BroadBand Services (NBBS) is a comprehensive networking architecture designed for high-speed networks. To meet the demands of multicast communication applications e.g., video on demand, software distribution, and video conferencing, NBBS multicast services provide support for efficient best-effort and guaranteed quality-of-service (Q OS) multipoint network connections. The NBBS multicast services consis t of set management services and multicast network connection services . Set management services provide the ability to create and manage gro ups of users who are interested in participating in multicast activiti es. Multicast network connection services use the group membership inf ormation provided by set management services to support multiple netwo rk connections per group and to provide supporting services such as no ndisruptive path switching, path preemption, and bandwidth management The multicast network connection services support the multicast signal ing requirements defined by the asynchronous transfer mode user-to-net work interface (ATM UNI) specifications. This paper gives an overview of the NBBS multicast connection services. Set concepts are introduced an overview of set management protocols is given, and the value of se t management services in establishing multicast network connections is discussed Finally, multicast network connection protocols that establ ish, maintain, and terminate multicast network connections are describ ed.