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Video services on Passive Optical Networks (PON) are widely used for the IPTV multicast services and proliferating. One of the new PON technologies used by telecommunication operators in Indonesia is the 10-Gigabit-capable symmetric passive optical network (XGS-PON). However, there is no technical standardization related to multicast services on the XGS-PON system. Therefore, this study will develop a test method and evaluate multicast services' performance on Optical Line Termination (OLT) equipment of XGS-PON. The OLT has the most critical function in managing services, including distributing Internet Protocol Television (IPTV) service to customers. Six parameters proposed as standardization regulation to determine the XGS-PON OLT capability are as follows: IGMP version 2, IGMP version 3, IGMP Proxy, IGMP transparent snooping, IGMP snooping with proxy reporting, and IGMP Multicast Group. The experiment result confirmed that XGS-PON OLT supports multicast protocols following ITU-T G.9807.1 recommendations, namely IGMP version 2 and IGMP version 3. It also shows that XGS-PON OLT supports IGMP mode capabilities such as IGMP proxy mode, IGMP transparent snooping mode, and IGMP snooping with proxy reporting. Furthermore, XGS-PON OLT supports the maximum number of multicast groups simultaneously for 2048 IGMP multicast groups following the TR-101 guideline from Broadband Forum. These results can be used as a reference for technical standardization regulations development of IPTV multicast service in XGS-PON.

In this paper we investigate the vulnerability of the Internet Group Management Protocol (IGMP) to be leveraged for denial-of-service (DoS) attacks. IGMP is a connectionless protocol and therefore susceptible to attackers spoofing a third-party victim's source address in an effort to coax responders to send their replies to the victim. We find 305K IGMP responders that will indeed answer queries from arbitrary Internet hosts. Further, the responses are often larger than the requests, hence amplifying the attacker's own expenditure of bandwidth. We conclude that attackers can coordinate IGMP responders to mount sizeable DoS attacks.

This document defines a YANG data model that can be used to configure and manage Internet Group Management Protocol (IGMP) and Multicast Listener Discovery (MLD) devices.

It is usual that the applications executed in data centers require the distribution of the same data from one node to others at various execution points and that some of them require to cope with multiple of these diffusions in parallel. Multicast-based communications are an alternative solution to sending data efficiently to multiple nodes. This paper proposes a novel technique which offers reliability and congestion control in the multi-multicast transfers in data center networks. The proposal is based on: (1) a new congestion control mechanism, which monitors the control information of the receivers, reducing the server injection rate, (2) taking advantage of the switch diffusion hardware, and (3) using IGMP snooping, which allows a network switch to multicast a packet just to the output links with host receivers joined to a multicast group. The implementation is made at user level and uses the UDP interface. Evaluation tests are performed in a CentOS-based cluster composed of 12 servers in the presence of multiple diffusions at the same time. Test results show improvements in the global bandwidth, avoid network saturation, and reduce overhead included by unicast communications in data transmission.

Today the deployment of Fiber-To-The-x (FTTx) technology is developing very rapidly in various regions of Indonesia. One of the most favorite technologies for telecommunication operators is the XG-PON, which offers high-speed internet access speeds of 10Gbps downstream and 2.5Gbps upstream directions and able to pass various services at once, such as data, voice, to video multicast (IPTV) services. However, regulation of the standardization of technical requirements for multicast services does not include this new technology, so a reference test is needed to update the regulations. In this study, testing of Optical Line Termination (OLT) devices uses five scenarios, namely the ability to pass IGMP version 2, IGMP version 3, ability to support IGMP Snooping and IGMP proxy and capacity in passing several IGMP multicast groups. The test results show that the tested OLT XGPON device can display the suitability of the IGMP message format version 2 with the RFC 2236 standard and IGMP version 3 with the RFC 3376 Standard. Whereas in IGMP proxy testing traffic, the OLT equipment displays the source IP address is 0.0.0.0, which complies with the RFC 4541 standard for the Reporting proxy process. The OLT XG-PON device tested was also capable of passing 1,024 IGMP multicast groups with a range of multicast group addresses from 239.1.1.1 to 239.1.5.1.

The efficient provision of IPTV services requires support for IP multicasting and IGMP snooping, limiting such services to single operator networks. Information-Centric Networking (ICN), with its native support for multicast seems ideal for such services, but it requires operators and users to overhaul their networks and applications. The POINT project has proposed a hybrid, IP-over-ICN, architecture, preserving IP devices and applications at the edge, but interconnecting them via an SDN-based ICN core. This allows individual operators to exploit the benefits of ICN, without expecting the rest of the Internet to change. In this paper, we first outline the POINT approach and show how it can handle multicast-based IPTV services in a more efficient and resilient manner than IP. We then describe a successful trial of the POINT prototype in a production network, where real users tested actual IPTV services over both IP and POINT under regular and exceptional conditions. Results from the trial show that the POINT prototype matched or improved upon the services offered via plain IP.

In this paper, the Ethernet multicast management protocol agent (IGMP Proxy) processing unit is designed, which is composed of ARMCPU and CS8022 chips. The packets through the up-link or the down-link are firstly received by CS8022 network node interfaces or service node interfaces, then through the CS8022 port analysis, the IGMP message would be sent to the IGMP Proxy Program of ARMCPU to handle. The IGMP Proxy program is composed of the main module, the host module and the routing module. After the processing of the main module, the host module and the routing module, the amount of the IGMP message between the multicast router and the user computer can be greatly reduced, and speed up the response speed of the multicast router query message; When the multicast stream reaches the multicast router, the time for receiving the multicast stream from the user computer is shortened and the network bandwidth is saved.

At present, the power distribution communication network in substation is based on ICE61850 communication protocol. The protocol is mainly used for interconnection among the substation internal equipment. However, the power distribution terminals of different substations cannot communicate with each other. It is hard to manage the system in a unified manner. Most of the 61850 distribution terminals in the substation are produced by SIFANG Company. These types of equipment only support the layer-two protocol of GMRP, and hence the popular IP multicast protocol (IGMP) and the layer-two multicast protocol IGMP Snooping are not supported. The layer-two multicast packets cannot pass through the existing TD-LTE network. Hence, in this paper, we propose a scheme to help the existing power distribution terminal access to the TD-LTE network. We transform the CPE in LTE network and add a 61850 protocol conversion module. The performance results which are obtained in the practical system show that our scheme satisfies the requirements of delay and data rate of the power grids.

This paper presents our performance evaluation after the way of minimizing waiting times between channel switching for eMBMS(evolved Multimedia Broadcast/Multicast Services) technique in LTE-Advanced systems. Existing composition of MBMS using IGMP(Internet Group Management Protocol) transfers the data with Multicast from BM-SC(Broadcast Multicast Service Center) to eNB(evolevd Node B) and with Broadcast from eNB to UE(User Equipment). Therefore, in case of channel switching, IGMP Join report should be transferred to BM-SC and then wait user`s contents to be retransferred from eNB. To achieve this, Subscriber Channel technique of priorities is used for minimizing waiting times between channel switching as UE broadcasts favorite channels in advance.

In this paper, we propose an IPTV controllable multicast solution, which combines the technology of SCB, IGMP and the extended OAM. SCB and IGMP are responsible for the distribution of multicast service. A method that based on the extended OAM multicast control packets is used to realize the functions of control and management in multicast service. We also explain the bandwidth design methods of the EPON system. In the end, the implementation scheme of EPON controllable multicast in IPTV application is proposed.

This paper discusses a new solution for IGMP (Internet Group Management Protocol) for PLC (Programmable Logic Controller) in intelligent manufacturing system. It is based on the study of a new PLC design with an Ethernet switch device 88E6165 embedded in it. The switch passes IGMP traffic from the external switch ports to the CPU (Central Processing Unit) for snooping and forwarding via the CPU Ethernet interface. The architecture of multi hosts in the intelligent manufacturing system is given in the paper. The use case(s), actors and process are also analyzed to perform the switch operations with IGMP. This process uses a switch manager to perform a manager role to periodically query all devices in the subnet and subsequently. It causes devices to re-join the multicast group of listeners for any stream in which they may be interested.

IPTV services delivered traditional television channels via IP to customers. IGMP protocol is the control mechanism used to control the delivery of multicast traffic to interested and authorized users. IGMP commands notify the upstream equipment to stop sending (“leave”) one channel or begin sending (“join”) another channel. Depending on the architectural choices, this process occurs in the DSLAM, an aggregation switch, or at an edge router. All channels are sent by a multicast source to DSLAM even if no user in the DSLAM has requested it. This leads to sub-optimal use of bandwidth. This paper studies and investigates the performance of IPTV controlled by CGMP Protocol to save bandwidth using OPNET package. It shows that when CGMP is enabled on edge routers and switches, hosts receive only the channels demanded and therefore the bandwidth is optimized and also the queuing delay is reduced.

This paper has a discussion on the new solution of IGMP management for multicast message in industrial Ethernet. It proposed a new mechanism to minimize the congestion which is based on the taking an adaptive decision during transferring multicast messages. Proposed approach is that a device requesting to start and stop the reception of the multicast streams is accomplished through IGMP join and Leave message requests. Quality of Service (QOS) as a component is supported by the Switch Manager as well as features built into the micro chip. The IGMP Snooping component monitors (snoops) these join and leave messages to allow it to know which streams to prune from which ports. it is a service provided by most managed Ethernet switches. However, the ICIE (Intelligent Controller for Industrial Ethernet) does not provide this capability and requires that another device in the network supports the querier functionality. It is through the external devices solicitation of join messages that allow the IGMP Snooping component to correctly decipher on which ports the downstream listeners are connected.

The objective of this work was to implement Internet Group Management Protocol snooping to support multicast functionality on Linux-based Ethernet switch and carry out its performance evaluation. The implementation of the new functionality required modifications and improvements of two segments of the operating system: some parts of kernel and the user space management software. Algorithms and data structures, used for building multicast table, have been implemented in order to improve switching logic, which is now based on entries in the multicast table. Performance evaluation has been performed in a dedicated environment using a traffic analyzer, able to generate different types of traffic and traffic loads. The results are given for combinations of different loadings and numbers of target ports and prove that the implementation does not only decrease overall network load by reducing redundant broadcast flooding, but also increase the performance of switch by eliminating unnecessary frame forwarding, which eventually leads to lower frame losses and shorter queuing delays.

This paper has an introduction on a new intelligent controller for industrial Ethernet with IGMP: ICIE (Intelligent Controller for Industrial Ethernet). It proposed a new mechanism to minimize the congestion which is based on the taking an adaptive decision during transferring multicast messages. It also focuses on the sequences analysis on IGMP snooping. It has a further discussion on the steps: receiving IGMP loin message, receiving IGMP leave message, receiving IGMP query message, sending IGMP join message, sending IGMP leave message and network topology change. According to the requirement of end device ring topology, we add a DSA tagged BPDU to indict the target of packet. It is through the external devices solicitation of join messages that allow the IGMP Snooping component to correctly decipher on which ports the downstream listeners are connected.

Based on a kind of new intelligent controller for industrial Ethernet: ICIE (Intelligent Controller for Industrial Ethernet), this paper proposed a new mechanism to minimize the congestion which is based on the taking an adaptive decision during transferring multicast messages by IGMP snooping. It has a further discussion on services design on the switch. And it analyzes on the implementation for switch management for ICIE. It is through the external devices solicitation of join messages that allow the IGMP Snooping component to correctly decipher on which ports the downstream listeners are connected.

We propose a new Internet group management protocol (IGMP) which can be used in passive optical network (PON) especially for IPTV services which dramatically reduces the channel change response time caused by traditional IGMP. In this paper, the newly proposed IGMP is introduced in detail and performance analysis is also included. Simulation results demonstrated the performance of the newly proposed IGMP, whereby, viewers can watch the shared IPTV channels without the channel change response time when channel request reaches a threshold.

IP multicast is best-known for its bandwidth conservation and lower resource utilization. The present service model of multicast makes it difficult to restrict access to authorized End Users (EUs) or paying customers. Without an effective receiver access control, an adversary may exploit the existing IP multicast model, where a host or EU can join any multicast group by sending an Internet Group Management Protocol (IGMP) join message without prior authentication and authorization. We have developed a novel, scalable and secured access control architecture for IP multicast that deploys Authentication Authorization and Accounting (AAA) protocols to control group membership. The principal feature of the access control architecture, receiver access control, is addressed in this paper. The EU or host informs the multicast Access Router (AR) of its interest in receiving multicast traffic using the IGMP protocol. We propose the necessary extensions of IGMPv3 to carry AAA information, called IGMP with Access Control (IGMP-AC). For EU authentication, IGMP-AC encapsulates Extensible Authentication Protocol (EAP) packets. EAP is an authentication framework to provide some common functions and a negotiation of the desired authentication mechanism. Thus, IGMP-AC can support a variety of authentications by encapsulating different EAP methods. Furthermore, we have modeled the IGMP-AC protocol in PROMELA, and also verified the model using SPIN. We have illustrated the EAP encapsulation method with an example EAP method, EAP Internet Key Exchange (EAP-IKEv2). We have used AVISPA to validate the security properties of the EAP-IKEv2 method in pass-through mode, which fits within the IGMP-AC architecture. Finally, we have extended our previously developed access control architecture to accomplish inter-domain receiver access control and demonstrated the applicability of IGMP-AC in a multi-domain environment.

When an IP Multicast network is constructed on a switch-based network, many IP Multicast packet broadcasts are generated, and these broadcasts cause trouble for all of the other kinds of communication. To solve this problem, implementing IGMP Snooping on various switches has been proposed. However, some switches have insufficient IP Multicast packet-handling capability. This problem is also mentioned in RFC4541. In this paper, we propose the IGMP Snooping Activator (ISA) mechanism as a way to solve the IP Multicast packet-handling problem. The ISA transmits dummy IGMP Queries to maintain the IP Multicast network, and it joins the flooding IP Multicast group to activate IGMP Snooping in switches that are unable to handle IP Multicast packets. The experimental evaluation shows the effectiveness of our proposed method: the network load decreases because of the method's effective restraint of IP Multicast packet flooding.

A receiver access control scheme is proposed to protect the multicast distribution tree from DoS attack induced by unauthorized use of IGMP, by extending the security-related functionality of IGMP. Based on a specific network and business model adopted for commercial deployment of IP multicast applications, a key management scheme is also presented for bootstrapping the proposed access control as well as accounting and billing for CP (Content Provider), NSP (Network Service Provider), and group members.

A ubiquitous and efficient multicast data delivery service is essential to the success of large-scale group communication applications. The original IP multicast design is to enhance network routers with multicast capability [S. Deering, D. Cheriton, Multicast routing in datagram internetworks and extended LANs, ACM Transactions on Computer Systems 8(2) (1990) 85-110]. This approach can achieve great transmission efficiency and performance but also poses a critical dependency on universal deployment. A different approach, overlay multicast, moves multicast functionality to end hosts, thereby removing the dependency on router deployment, albeit at the cost of noticeable performance penalty compared to IP multicast. In this paper we present the Universal Multicast (UM) framework, along with a set of mechanisms and protocols, to provide ubiquitous multicast delivery service on the Internet. Our design can fully utilize native IP multicast wherever it is available, and automatically build unicast tunnels to connect IP Multicast "islands" to form an overall multicast overlay. The UM design consists of three major components: an overlay multicast protocol (HMTP) for inter-island routing, an intra-island multicast management protocol (HGMP) to glue overlay multicast and native IP multicast together, and a daemon program to implement the functionality at hosts. In addition to performance evaluation through simulations, we have also implemented parts of the UM framework. Our prototype implementation has been used to broadcast several workshops and the ACM SIGCOMM 2004 conference live on the Internet. We present some statistics collected during the live broadcast and describe mechanisms we adopted to support end hosts behind Network Address Translation (NAT) gateways and firewalls.

Home network systems including a home gateway are expected to facilitate the convergence of broadcasting and communication services to complement the ubiquitous computing and services. We focus on supporting the convergence of broadcasting and communication in home network systems with an Ethernet passive optical network (EPON)-based home gateway. We propose a new architecture that integrates broadcasting and data services in a home network. For this architecture, we use an overlay transport mechanism in access network and IP multicast techniques of the Internet group management protocol (IGMP) and IGMP snooping in a home network. We also detail a set of mechanisms and procedures for a home broadcasting service through the home gateway system. Our new scheme is composed of three parts: a) an overlay transmission model of video broadcasting signals (satellite and/or cable TV) and Internet data, b) to select a specific video broadcasting channel and video broadcasting stream into IP multicast packets in tuner/conversion module using multiple tuner system and c) to transfer the converted IP multicast packets to L2 switch of home gateway's core module and to send them out to target port(s) by L2 multicast using IGMP snooping.

This paper proposes a mechanism called a Multicast Handoff Agent (MHA) to reduce handoff latency for IP multicast. The MHA acts as a proxy for the Internet Group Management Protocol (IGMP) of mobile nodes and keeps information for members of multicast groups in a cell. When a mobile node moves to other cell, the MHA immediately sends unsolicited reports without waiting for the IGMP query. In addition, our mechanism may conserve battery power since it does not need to reply to a query.The mechanism is evaluated through simulation and analysis and compared with the IGMPv2 for mobility and IGMP traffic. Simulation results show that handoff latency can be largely reduced and the IGMP control traffic can be eliminated on the wireless links during the duration of membership.

We examine the applicability of existing IP multicast mechanisms for point-to-point links such as wired and wireless telephone lines. We identify problems such as overhead due to IGMP leave latency and unnecessary probing of hosts, both important issues for power constrained mobile hosts and low bandwidth wireless links. We propose alternative mechanisms that preserve the IP multicasting model, but employ join-leave messages to track group membership. We describe the implementation requirements of our mechanisms and compare them to existing ones with respect to performance, mobile power efficiency, interoperability, robustness and implementation complexity, demonstrating that the join-leave approach is uniformly superior for this environment.

IGMP is an important multicast protocol in internet. Its work mode can either be proxy mode or be snooping mode. A resolution for IGMP v3 protocol using Finite State Machine which works at proxy mode has been proposed. The IGMP proxy contains three parts: the IGMP proxy router, IGMP proxy host and IGMP querier. The IGMP proxy router handles the received IGMP packets from subscriber ports, stores and manages the joined groups and sources, as well as notifies IGMP host to send membership reports to uplink ports. The IGMP proxy host sends IGMP membership reports to uplink port according to the state changes of the groups in IGMP proxy router, and responds the query from uplink ports. The IGMP querier sends IGMP query messages to downlink ports according to the received "leave" messages.

Recent developments in router level topology discovery have suggested the introduction of IGMP probing in addition to standard techniques such as traceroute and alias resolution. With a single IGMP probe, one can obtain all multicast interfaces and links of a multicast router. If such a probing is a promising approach, we noticed that IGMP probes are subject to filtering, leading so to the fragmentation of the collected multicast graph into several disjoint connected components. In this paper, we cope with the fragmentation issue. Our contributions are threefold: (i) we experimentally quantify the damages caused by IGMP filtering on collected topologies of large tier-1 ISPs; (ii) using traceroute data, we construct a hybrid graph and estimate how far each IGMP fragment is from each other; (iii) we provide and experimentally evaluate a recursive approach for reconnecting disjoint multicast components. The key idea of the third contribution is to recursively apply alias resolution to reassemble disjoint fragments and, thus, progressively extend the mapping of the targeted ISP. Data presented in the paper, as well as reconstructed topologies, are freely available at http://svnet.u-strasbg.fr/merlin.

Shortening the channel change time is a critical issue in Internet protocol television (IPTV), and many methods have been proposed to address this issue. However, since these methods do not take into account the Internet group management protocol (IGMP) load on multicast routers, the number of IGMP packets will increase significantly, which will cause network instability. To investigate the effect of IGMP load, we performed a preliminary experiment that revealed that a multicast router does not work properly when it receives bursts of IGMP packets. To decrease the IGMP load as well as shortening the channel change time, we propose a multicast group aggregation method. Through simulation experiments, we show the effectiveness of the method.

International audience; To manage multicast group in wired or wireless domain, the hosts need to send internet group management protocol (IGMP) report message when they are queried by the multicast routers. In fact, the bandwidth of wireless domain and mobile nodes' battery power are scarce resources; therefore, it can be big burden for the receiver-driven layered video multicasting (RLVM) receiving mobile hosts to follow the conventional report sending phenomenon, where a host needs to send a report message for subscribing each of the video layers. In this paper, we propose a mechanism for reducing the number of IGMP report messages for RLVM receiving hosts. The protocol overhead and efficiency are evaluated, and compared with conventional IGMPs. Our results show that applying proposed idea in IGMP the number of report messages can be minimized significantly for RLVM services

Mobile WiMAX access network is being developed to support various multimedia services such as mobile Internet Protocol Television (IPTV), mobile Video-on-Demand (VoD), and mobile internet services. This mobile network is a shared radio medium which utilizes a point-to-multipoint method, where one base station (BS) can be connected to many mobile stations (MS). That is to say that a mobile IPTV viewer can join a specific multicast group over mobile WiMAX access network, while others, at the same time, are able to receive the same program channel, even though they do not belong to the same multicast group. This, however, is different from the traditional Internet Group Management Protocol (IGMP) version, used for IPTV services, in network layer which does not allow immediate program channel sharing. This is because the Connection ID (CID) is required before the Multicast Broadcast Service (MBS) can transmit its service flows in mobile WiMAX. Therefore, in this case, viewers always need to perform two processes before they are able to view the program channels, i.e. performing the IGMP join/leave at network layer and obtaining the CID at Medium Access Control (MAC) layer. This paper propose a new extended IGMP protocol which can be used in mobile WiMAX radio access network especially for mobile IPTV services to reduce the channel change time on the network.

Mobile access networks are being developed to support various multimedia services such as IPTV (Internet Protocol Television), VoD (Video on Demand), and high speed internet services. Especially, these networks are a point-to-multipoint method in which one MAG (Mobile Access Gateway) and many MNs (Mobile Node) are connected. In other words, if a mobile multimedia viewer is joining a specific multicast group over mobile access networks, the others receive the multimedia program at the same time although they do not belong to the same multicast group. However, the traditional IGMP versions do not allow immediate multimedia program sharing as explained about. Also, in traditional IGMP versions, a viewer always needs to send IGMP join report. This paper proposes IGMP extensions which improves group join and leave process in mobile access networks for multimedia services.

Proceedings of: The 34th Annual IEEE Conference on Local Computer Networks (LCN 2009), October 20-23, 2009, Zurich, Switzerland Wireless mesh networking is a promising, cost effective and efficient technology for realizing backhaul networks supporting high quality services. In such networks, multicast data are transmitted blindly without any mechanism protecting data from loss, ensuring data reception, and optimizing channel allocation. The multicast services may undergo, then, very high data loss ratio which is exacerbated with the number of hops. In this paper, we propose a Reliable Multicast Distribution System (RMDS) to optimize multicast packets transmission in bridged networks. Relying on a modification of the IGMP snooping protocol, RMDS enables reliable services provisioning support in common wireless mesh networks. In particular, RMDS only exploits the local knowledge of a particular node to compute the multicast tree, which significantly reduces the signalling overhead in comparison with network layer and overlay solutions. Simulation results elucidate that RMDS optimizes resources’ allocation by reducing significantly the network load, the media access delay and the data drop rate compared to the classical approach, which is based on the combination of spanning tree algorithm and IGMP snooping protocol. European Community's Seventh Framework Program Publicado

Even though IP multicast can be used for efficient bandwidth utilisation for one-to-many or many-to-many applications, it has not been widely deployed. To commercially deploy multicast services, it is important for the network providers to support AAA services for multicast applications whereby the network providers can control user access to the multicast content and account the multicast usage. Standard multicast protocols do not provide any method to restrict access to only paying customers. In view of this, this paper proposes a novel method to provide access control for multicast services. The proposed IGMPx method provides port-based service access control based for multicast services to ensure multicast user authentication prior to service delivery. The proposed IGMPx method supports multiple users running multiple multicast sessions and also supports older IGMP versions. An OPNET model is built to demonstrate the working of the IGMPx method.

The QoE improvement provides improvement in the speed of internet service. If we can reduce one second of the delay of internet service, there will be a big improvement for the QoE. There is the same situation with IPTV service. Reducing zapping time is the linchpin in the QoE of the IPTV service. The main reason of the zapping time occurrence is the latency when user joins IGMP group. The second causation is the latency of transporting video, and the third one is latency that a settop box takes to encode the video. In this paper, we mainly research how to reduce the latency when the user joins into the IGMP[2] group. In IPTV, each user must join the group according to the IGMP group. We are proposing to tie join messages of the same IPTV group's users together and after send to the server. With this way we can reduce the latency of the joining to the IGMP. In this paper, we analyzed zapping time problem about IPTV service, and we also addressed network performance and user management. We tested our solution in the overlay multicast testbed and analyzed the results of test.

Today, due to the fast development of Internet Protocol TV (IPTV), which is the combination of IP technology and two-way broadband networks, the telecom industry is undergoing fundamental changes. Network operators and service providers around the world are making significant investments in order to deliver digital video content to their subscribers. Video puts very high demands on the network and utilizes a large fraction of the available bandwidth. Consequently, it is important to understand the technical demands that IPTV requires of the network infrastructure as well as user behavior and network traffic patterns to further optimize network operation. The purpose of this paper is to characterize IPTV traffic and study end user behavior by analyzing and modeling IPTV traffic collected from a Swedish municipal network. The focus of the measurements was put on Internet Group Management Protocol (IGMP) packets. Apart from the measurement results and analysis, the paper provides background information about the technologies and issues of IPTV. IP multicast which is used for transferring Live TV content is based on the concept of a group. IGMP is used to manage the membership of multicast groups. Based on this information, traffic parameters for analysis were chosen and measured.

IGMP is a host-router signaling protocol, and it is used to manage the membership of Internet Protocol multicast groups for IPv4. IGMPv3 adds "source filtering" function required to support SSM. Firstly, this paper analyses the improvements and implementation of IGMPv3. Secondly, it points out the problems when applying IGMPv3 to IPTV carrying network. Then it presents the solutions by improving IGMPv3 protocol to reduce channel zapping time which is one of the important metrics affecting the QoE in IPTV service. Method to realize the end user authentication, authorization and accounting in the IP multicast security and authentication area by extending the IGMPv3 protocol is described at last.

A dedicated multicast VLAN is adopted to eliminate the extra multicast replication in a video server. The technique of multicast VLAN and cross-VLAN multicast in IP-based access network is discussed along with the application network. The detailed design and implementation of multicast VLAN in an IP DSLAM with a distributed architecture is given as well as an application example.

Multicasting was initially designed for stationary scenarios and does not consider extra requirements for mobile stations. Multicast membership protocols such as IGMP should be carefully evaluated whether they are completely suitable or should make some extensions or modification for wireless environments. The bandwidth constraints and variable conditions of radio networks require a compact, adaptive multicast group management protocol, which should minimize the packet interchanging between the mobile host and the multicast router. This paper differs from previous work in that it concerns multicasting in a single cell IEEE 802.11 network. Formulas for calculating the total and partial channel capture time by the IGMP traffic are presented, and then we provide a method for calculating the reliability of the standard IGMP management scheme. We present a new dynamic group management algorithm which provides constant reliability, automatically adapting to the channel conditions. Some improvements regarding the processing and forwarding of multicast frames are also presented.

In this paper, we study a viewer counting method for multicast-based IPTV services. Recently, streaming services over an IP network, such as IPTV and/or Internet radio, have become popular, as a result of the rapid deployment of broadband access. IP multicast is an effective technology for simultaneous distribution of content to many viewers. However, it is difficult to grasp the number of viewers, since IP multicast does not require any direct communication from viewers to the distribution server, only to the adjacent router. We propose a novel viewer counting method from the carrier's perspective using multicast forwarding information from the distribution network. Our experimental results indicate that the proposed method is expected to obtain a rating of 100,000 viewers every 1 minute.

In this paper, we propose a novel IPTV channel leave mechanism for Passive Optical Network (PON). By explicit user tracking and automatic differentiation of IGMP v2 and v3 us ers, the proposed mechanism can realize immediate channel leave in both Optical Line Terminal (OLT) and Optical Network Unit (ONU) while avoiding removing the channel which still has users. Simulation results show that the proposed mechanism can significantly save the bandwidth consumption during “channel surf” by users, compared to the standard IGMP timeout mechanism. Keywords: IPTV, IGMP, PON, channel leave 1. INTRODUCTION Internet Protocol Television (IPTV) is a rapidly developing technology for the delivery of broadcast TV and multimedia services over a secure, managed broadband IP network. The advantage of IPTV over traditional cable TV is that it can provide totally different user experience and integrated services of video, data and voice, which can include broadcast TV, video on demand (VOD), interactive multimedia applica tion (e.g. video conference), an d Internet access, etc. IPTV provides telecom operators an opportunity of providing new services through their network and increasing the revenue. Several famous international telecom operators have begun to deploy IPTV services. To guarantee satisfied user experience is crucial for the success of IPTV business. Of the metrics of user experience, channel switch performance is one of the critical issues. Users have been familia r with fast channel switch in cable TV, where channel switch delay could be within 200ms. However in IPTV, if the technology is not properly chosen, the delay could be up to several seconds, which will be very annoying for users. To realize fast channel switch, both fast change to the new channel and fast leave from the original ch annel are important. Currently, the leave latency of one channel in IPTV depends on the timeout mechanism of IGMP (Internet Group Management Protocol). This delay may be long (usually 2~3s), which may lead to concurrent existing of the new requested channel and the slow leaving channel when users are performing “channel surf”, which will lead to bandwidth wasting. Furthermore, if there is some bandwidth constraint for the user, the slow leaving channel might block the joining of the new requested channel, whic h may enlarge the channel change delay. To reduce the leave latency, several fast leave mechanisms have been proposed. In IGMP v2 [1] and v3 [2], one can reduce the timeout value in IGMP to speed up the leaving process. When receiving one IGMP leave message, the router/IGMP proxy can set [Max Response Time] in the query message to a small value (even 0) to force users to send membership reports immediately after the receipt of the query message. Thus the timeout value can be reduced. However, this value can not be set too small considering th e Round Trip Time between the router/ proxy and users, and possible loss of membership reports. All users’ sending report s simultaneously will lead to burst traffic, and high burden of IGMP processing in router/IGMP proxy especially in a large IPTV multicast session. In [3], the improved version of IGMP is proposed. When th e router detects that the network will become congested, it will intelligently select one pending leave group to drop. The prin ciple behind is to make sure the playback of the groups which still have uses by dropping the channel which is the most probable to have no users. But certainly there exists the possibility that some channel having users is incorrectly removed. To realize immediate leave, in [4] and [5], explicit user tracking is used by routers/IGMP proxy or snooping devices to record the user subscription information in every port according to the received IGMP messages. If there is no user for some group in one port according to the user table, that group can be immediat ely removed in that port when necessary without waiting for the expiration of the IGMP timer.

This chapter contains sections titled: IGMP Messages IGMPv3 Messages IGMP Operation Appendix 4.A: Protocol Details for IGMPv2 Appendix 4.B: IGMP Snooping Switches Appendix 4.C: Example of Router Configurations References

International audience; This paper describes the issues related to IP multicast support in satellites networks. The IGMP multicast membership management protocol is considered as inappropriate for multicast group management over satellite network. In fact, IGMP leads to flooding, latency and scalability issues when used over asymmetric satellite networks. Thus, we propose a new architecture for multicast services provisioning based on IP multimedia subsystem (IMS) as a service delivery platform. The interworking between IP multicast protocol (i.e., IGMP) and IMS protocol (i.e., SIP) is demonstrated to overcome these multicast scalability issues inherent to satellite networks. Implementation and deployment of the proposed platform over an advanced satellite network emulator is also described.

IP Multicast is best known for its bandwidth conservation and lower resource utilization. The classical model of multicast makes it difficult to permit access only to authorized end users or paying customers. A scalable, distributed and secure architecture is needed where authorized end users can be authenticated before delivering any data or content. In (unsecure) multicast, an end user or host informs the multicast edge-router of its interest in receiving multicast traffic using the Internet Group Management Protocol (IGMP). To carry the end user authentication data, we have extended the IGMPv3 protocol, and called our new version the Internet Group Management Protocol with Access Control (IGMP-AC). New messages and reception states have been added to IGMPv3, and the AAA framework is used for end user authentication, authorization and accounting purposes. IGMP-AC is presented using state diagrams of the entities that are involved. The proposed protocol has been modeled in PROMELA, and has also been verified using SPIN.

In this paper, we present a new multicast architecture and the corresponding multicast routing protocol for providing efficient and flexible multicast services over the Internet. Traditional multicast protocols construct and update the multicast tree in a distributed manner, which may cause two problems: first, since each node has only local or partial information on the network topology and group membership, it is difficult to build an efficient multicast tree and, second, due to the lack of complete information, broadcast is often used for sending control packets and data packets, which consumes a great deal of network bandwidth. In the newly proposed multicast architecture, a few powerful routers, called m-routers, collect multicast-related information and process multicast requests based on the information collected. The m-routers handle most of the multicast-related tasks, whereas other routers in the network only need to perform minimum functions for routing. The m-routers are designed to be able to handle simultaneous many-to-many communications efficiently. The new multicast routing protocol, called the Service-Centric Multicast Protocol (SCMP), builds a shared multicast tree rooted at the m-router for each group. The multicast tree is computed in the m-router by employing the Delay-Constrained Dynamic Multicast (DCDM) algorithm, which dynamically builds a delay-constrained multicast tree and minimizes the tree cost as well. The physical construction of the multicast tree over the Internet is performed by a special type of self-routing packets in order to minimize the protocol overhead. Our simulation results on ns-2 demonstrate that the new SCMP protocol outperforms other existing protocols and is a promising alternative for providing efficient and flexible multicast services over the Internet.

Home gateway (HG), called residential gateway (RG) in other words, is a device that interconnects various home electronic devices to one another as well as connects these private home network devices to exterior public network. There are various types of digital home services in IP (Internet protocol)-based home network system; data service, entertainment service, security service, home automation service and so on. Multimedia related service, especially IPTV (Internet protocol television) service, is the attractive one to customer in these home network services. In this paper, we show the implementation of the broadband home gateway supporting multi-channel IPTV service. The proposed and implemented home gateway has an architecture that can provide multi-channel, more than three channels, HD (high definition) class IPTV service with 20 Mbps (megabits per second) bandwidth for each channel. For the improved IPTV service using IP multicast, the proposed HG uses Internet group multicast protocol (IGMP) proxy and IGMP snooping protocol. The proposed HG consists of two main components, system processor for NAT (network address translation) processing and system software functions and an L2 (layer 2) Ethernet switch to interface access network and network distribution in intra-home network. The multicast packets for the multi channel IPTV service go from ingress port for access network interface to egress ports for home network directly based on L2 multicast MAC (medium access control) table in L2 Ethernet switch without via the system processor of the HG. This paper specifies in detail the system structure and implementation of hardware, firmware and software for the proposed HG

This paper introduces an IPTV broadcast network architecture for digital multimedia distribution in a scalable, cost efficient, and reliable manner. The architecture presents a managed solution for broadcasting digital television, where its minimum-cost (Steiner) tree structure ensures significant bandwidth savings in the core, and its intelligent IGMP snooping Aggregation and Access nodes provide fast channel zapping, subscriber authorization, and channel profiling. We propose a system for providing resilient multimedia broadcasting services over the Tree-based VPLS (TVPLS) network. In particular, we propose a solution that balances the IPTV traffic load over disjoint Steiner trees with Split Horizon and dual connectivity at the Provide Edge (PE) routers. A network Management System (NMS) calculates disjoint minimum cost trees using the Steiner algorithm. Destination Provider Edge routers in the VPLS network are connected to the disjoint trees so that they can be serviced by either tree in the case of a fault. Each of the disjoint trees is provisioned with enough bandwidth to carry all of the services provided by the VPLS network. Under normal operation, however, the services are distributed evenly over the trees. In the event of a fault, the services on the faulty tree are switched to the other tree by the NMS using static Internet Group Management Protocol (IGMP) route entries.

IP multicast is an effective technology to distribute identical data simultaneously to multiple users. However, for technical and administrative reasons, IP multicast has not been globally deployed on the Internet. Another approach to multicast is application-level multicast (ALM). In ALM, multicast related features, such as group membership management, multicast routing and packet replication, are implemented at end-hosts instead of routers. Multicast delivery tree is constructed in the application layer, so all nodes in this tree are end-hosts. Packet transmission between end-hosts uses conventional IP unicast service. Therefore, ALM is a promising alternative to IP multicast. However, application-level multicast relying on end-hosts is more fragile than IP multicast relying on routers. Especially, when a mobile host forwards packets to downstream hosts, a handover causes performance degradations on downstream hosts. In this paper, to alleviate the impact of a handover, we propose a new tree building protocol which locates mobile hosts on leaves of multicast tree. A handover of the mobile host on a leaf does not affect other end-hosts. To investigate performance of our protocol, it is compared with existing application-level multicast protocols. Our simulation results show that our protocol outperforms existing protocols from the viewpoints of loss probability, throughput and delay performance.

This paper presents a new IGMP multicast support system for wireless highspeed portable Internet (HPi) networks. The Internet group management protocol (IGMP) is common standard session-layer protocol for IP multicasting on the Internet. However, the network topology and the L2 protocol of the HPi make it difficult to adopt the IGMP on HPi networks. We propose the use of an IGMP proxy for multicast services because it provides the way of joining a multicast group over IEEE 802.16e and assists the fast multicast rejoining operations during handoff. Finally, using the multicast delay model, we present numerical results showing the effect of the fast multicast rejoining method.

We propose a novel architecture of IPTV-aware multi-service home gateway based on FTTH access network which can provides more bandwidth than 100 Mbps to each subscriber. The proposed home gateway uses EPON network as access network interface and has various interfaces as home network interface. The interfaces for home network are Ethernet, IEEE 1394, wireless LAN, pure PSTN phone and video door-phone system. Our proposed home gateway is characterized to capable of providing multi-channel, more than three, IPTV service of HD class with 20 Mbps for each channel. For the characterizing IPTV service using IP multicast packet, the proposed home gateway uses IGMP proxy and IGMP snooping protocol. In the proposed home gateway with the functions, the multicast packets for IPTV service go from ingress port to egress ports directly based on L2 multicast MAC table in L2 Ethernet switch without via the network processor. The distinctive function improves the performance of the home gateway with alleviating the load of the network processor and encourages providing various services using above multiple home network interfaces at the same time.

Internet multicast is an important networked service for many existing and emerging applications. The dominant mechanism for group management of IP multicasting is the Internet group management protocol (IGMP). IGMP is based on a query/reply model and refreshes group membership periodically. IGMP has been evolving through three versions. IGMP v1 develops the basis of the query/reply group management model and suppression mechanism, IGMP v2 reduces leave latency that IGMP v1 suffers from, and IGMP v3 adds the capability of source filtering but removes the suppression mechanism of IGMP v1/v2. In this paper, a new group management protocol called receiver-initiated group membership protocol (RGMP) is proposed. Both source filtering and membership report suppression are supported. An RGMP host actively refreshes group membership in the neighboring multicast routers. No querier, and hence no query messages and timers, is required for periodically probing the presence of known groups. An individual host maintains a refresh timer per group. The refresh timer is reset once the suppression rule holds for a received report message, where the report may be a join, leave, state change, or a periodical refresh message. The receiver-initiated, self-synchronized refresh timer makes the RGMP suppression mechanism superior to that of IGMP v1/v2, which applies only for periodical refresh report message. As a result, the protocol overhead compared to IGMP v3 is significantly reduced, over a wide variety of service scenarios. In addition to reduced protocol overhead, RGMP is robust, scalable and adaptive to serve as a group management protocol.

With the availability and penetration of multicast-capable routers, many local networks in today's Internet are multicast-capable. However, achieving global IP multicast is still hindered by many management and technical difficulties. This is because routers interconnecting these local multicast-capable networks, or so-called "islands," are often either multicast-incapable or multicast-disabled. Traditional application-level multicast (ALM) only makes use of unicast connections to form delivery trees and has not fully taken advantage of the local multicast capability of an island. As a result, these protocols are not very efficient. In order to achieve efficient global multicast, we propose and study island multicast (IM) where unicast connections are used between islands while IP multicast is used within islands. We present the detailed mechanisms of the IM centralized approach. IM is simple to implement and is based on minimum spanning tree, and hence is applicable to many-to-many communication. We have implemented the protocol and done real measurements on PlanetLab. We show that our protocol significantly improves network performance (in terms of stress, delay and nodal degrees) as compared to using ALM alone.