Evaluation of an Overlay for Source-Specific Multicast in Asymmetric Routing Environments

Multicast routing is again gaining popularity with the development of new group services, like real-time multimedia streaming. The aim is to reach big groups of users with the quality level they expect, while using network resources in an efficient way. This is a challenge to be fulfilled as current multicast protocols still have difficulties in dealing with basic issues like asymmetric routing. In this work we describe and evaluate an overlay that allows the use of the source-specific multicast standard in environments with asymmetric routing. A set of tests is made in the data and control plane, to expose the pros and cons of this new proposal.