Survey of multicast routing algorithms and protocols

In the age of multimedia and high-speed networks, multicast is one of the mechanisms by which the power of the Internet can be further harnessed in an efficient manner. When more than one receiver is interested in receiving a transmission from a single or a set of senders, multicast is the most efficient and viable mechanism. In the protocol stack of the network, multicast is best implemented in the network layer in the form of a multicast routing protocol to select the best path for the transmission. The other layers of the protocol stack provide additional features for multicast. This paper deals with how multicasting is implemented in the Internet (IPv4). With emphasis on the implementation of multicast at the network layer the implementation of additional features for multicast at the other layers of the protocol stack are presented. The network layer is concerned with routing of the data in an efficient manner with minimal duplication of data to the various receivers. The features of the routing protocols that have been proposed for