Multicast services in high-speed interconnected LANs

Multicast packet transport is necessary for several important services, as teleconference or broadcast video. This paper proposes a method for multicast on a network of high-speed LANs, connected through simple switching nodes, according to an arbitrary topology. It is based on dynamic "multicast group trees", selected from a mesh topology, each corresponding to a session among a set of users exchanging multicast traffic. Information about each tree is distributed, and only maintained in those nodes that are on the tree. The tree dynamically evolves as users join or leave the group, and its management can be totally distributed among the switches and hosts.