SHM: Scalable and Backbone Topology-Aware Hybrid Multicast

Application layer multicast (ALM) has been proposed as a promising alternative to the IP multicast due to the difficulties in deploying network layer multicast in an operational network at the Internet scale. However, most of existing application layer multicast approaches build their overlay networks based on simple measurement with the end-to-end delay without considering the physical network topology and IP multicast deploying in local scale on the Internet. Thus, they might suffer some inefficiency such as long join delay, large maintenance overhead, and little flexibility to extend. In this paper we propose a novel hybrid multicast approach named SHM, which combining ALM and IP multicast to achieve ubiquitous multicast delivery. Simulation results show that SHM is able to provide more efficient multicast with less maintenance overhead, higher flexibility and reliability.