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This book covers the latest research results of multicast protocol design. It presents a new multicast protocol specifically designed for the next-generation Internet with enhanced networking nodes and describes how to apply it to improve performance.

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Next-generation Internet providers face high expectations, as contemporary users worldwide expect high-quality multimedia functionality in a landscape of ever-expanding network applications. This volume explores the critical research issue of turning today´s greatly enhanced hardware capacity to good use in designing a scalable multicast protocol for supporting large-scale multimedia services. Linking new hardware to improved performance in the Internet´s next incarnation is a research hot-spot in the computer communications field.

The methodical presentation deals with the key questions in turn: from the mechanics of multicast protocols to current state-of-the-art designs, and from methods of theoretical analysis of these protocols to applying them in the ns2 network simulator, known for being hard to extend. The authors´ years of research in the field inform this thorough treatment, which covers details such as applying AOM (application-oriented multicast) protocol to IPTV provision and resolving the practical design issues thrown up in creating scalable AOM multicast service models.

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Introduction.- Background and Literature Review.- Application-Oriented Multicast (AOM).- Inter-Domain AOM and Incremental Deployment.- AOM-Assisted Zapping Acceleration for IPTV.- Generic AON (GAON) Simulation Framework.- Conclusions and Open Research Issues.

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