Secure hierarchical multicast routing and multicast internet anonymity

In a computer network, multicast provides an efficient many-to-many service by constructing a delivery tree across all the members of the multicast group. There are a number of existing protocols for performing multicast routing. This work improves the field of multicast routing by presenting a new protocol that can be used to construct a hierarchical multicast tree composed of heterogeneous multicast domains. It also shows how this protocol can also be made secure, so that only authorized multicast members may use the multicast tree to send and receive data. Finally, this work presents multicast as a method of providing anonymity for participants in Internet communication.