Novel Multicast Operation Method in Metro Ethernet Networks

Metro Ethernet networks are rapidly becoming the networks of choice for aggregation of user traffic toward the core. It allows a wide variety of services to be carried over its infrastructure as Voice over IP (VoIP), Video conferencing, Live video broadcast, Video on Demand (VoD), and Interactive gaming. These services need large bandwidth and low delay and rely on multicasting for efficient delivery. Ethernet has been architected and designed for a shared medium, it inherently handles broadcast and multicast traffic very efficiently. While flooding of multicast frames may appear good in LANs, it could mean huge bandwidth wastages in a MAN or WAN. This article explores new technique to address efficient multicasting in provider Metro Ethernet networks without wasting bandwidth by modifying the source address field. Simulation of the proposed technique proves its efficiency compared to other techniques.