A Framework to Add AAA Functionalities in IP Multicast

Multicasting, as an operational paradigm, has not been widely adopted until now, in spite of the advantages of its lower resource utilization and bandwidth conservation. This is due to lack of control over the multicast groups, which implies that the Network Service Provider has no simple mechanism for generating revenue from IP multicast. The Authentication, Authorization and Accounting (AAA) protocols are being used very successfully to ensure revenue generation by controlling access to network resources in unicast communication. AAA protocols can be used for multicast based applications to authenticate the end users, to establish their authority to participate in the group, and to keep a record of their group activity. In this paper, we have proposed a framework to deploy AAA protocols in such uses. The edge-router will be the perfect place to implement the AAA client functions. A modification to the Internet Group Management Protocol (IGMP) is also required to carry end user authentication data.