Integrated fault-tolerant multicast and anycast routing algorithms

Anycast is a new communication service defined in IPv6 (Internet Protocol V ersion 6 for the next generation). An anycast message is the one that shoul d be delivered to the 'nearest' member in a group of designated recipients. Anycast and multicast mechanisms may be integrated to provide better servi ces. A group of replicated (or mirrored) servers that provides anycast serv ice may also provide multicast services and needs multicast to consistently update, whereas anycast routing may help a multicast request to reach the 'nearest' member in a multicast group. A novel integration routing protocol is presented for both multicast and anycast messages communications in the internet. The protocol is composed of four algorithms: (1) dynamic anycast routing algorithm for efficient transmission of anycast messages over the internet to a group of servers. (2) integrated anycast routing with core-ba sed tree technique based on multicast routing algorithms taking advantage o f short delay, high throughput and load sharing. (3) Fault-tolerant algorit hms for both anycast and multicast routing using backup paths restoring tec hniques. The performance figures have demonstrated the benefits of anycast routing in reducing end-to-end packet delay, and attaining load balance and fault-tolerance for multicast.