Access Control and Group Key Management of IP Multicast

IP multicast is an efficient multi-agent transport protocol. With the development of network, multicast will be more and more important. Applications of multicast will be used in many areas. As a fresh new thriving academic field, the main research is focused on multicast routing, the flow control, the congestion control and reliable multicast. But there are few results referred to multicast security especially to group key management. In this paper.it will submit a scheme of group key management for large dynamic multicast system. This scheme adopts hierarchical architecture,includes a control-center (main key management center: KMC) which is composed of a cluster of computers, and some sub key management center (SKMC) which manages its sub-domain. The scheme can efficiently handle the joining and leaving of group members and avoid one-point failure. It also enhances the robustness of the manage system.