Challenges and advances in using IP multicast for overlay data delivery

IP multicast and overlay multicast have been proposed for one-to-many data delivery over the Internet. Compared to overlay multicast, IP multicast is less deployed but can achieve higher delivery efficiency. Researchers hence study how to combine IP multicast with overlay multicast in order to achieve both high deployability and high delivery efficiency. This combination is called island multicast. In this article we present a comprehensive survey of recent research on island multicast. We investigate the general architecture and key components of island multicast. We then discuss the core issue in island multicast: how to set up delivery connections across multiple multicast domains. We finally discuss open issues for future research.