Multicast routing algorithms and protocols: A tutorial

Multicasting is the ability of a communication network to accept a single m essage from an application and to deliver copies of the message to multiple recipients at different locations. Recently, there has been an explosion of research literature on multicast communication. This work presents a tutor ial-cum-survey of the various multicast routing algorithms and their relati onship with multicast routing protocols packet-switched-wide-area networks. Our contribution should be of particular benefit to the fgeneric networkin g audience (and, to a leser extent, to the expert on this subject).