Performance and cost analysis of mobile Internet multicast protocols

This paper presents performance analysis of two general approaches to IP multicasting in mobile environments. In the first approach, copies of each multicast datagram were forwarded to Mobility Agents in all wireless LANs on a campus. The other approach designated the Mobility Agent as a proxy (fixed host) for its local mobile hosts to participate in communication group, thus allowing current multicast protocols on the wired backbone to be easily applied. We develop an analytical model for quantifying their performance metrics. Performance is measured in terms of the latency required for group members, fixed and mobile hosts, to receive a datagram addressed to them, network bandwidth required to accomplish a single multicast. Numerical results show that each approach can outperform the other in certain circumstances