Support for Multicast-Aware QoS in NGNs: the DAIDALOS Approach

Spreading of traditional and novel broadcast applications in the Internet, such as messaging and video conferencing has, in the last few years, considerably increased the interest in support for broadcast applications within research community. In general broadcast poses several challenges at network and application/session levels ranging from efficient use of bandwidth, reliability of content delivery to security and authentication, spontaneous activation of multiparty sessions, and flexible support for renegotiation of session parameters. In addition, when considering the Internet, support for broadcast has to be engineered so as to assure full integration of broadcast technology in a heterogeneous infrastructure and high-scalability with respect to the number of potential users of a multicast session. State-ofthe-art of broadcast technology comprises a vast number of proposed protocols, algorithms and network technologies with native-support for broadcast. This paper presents the approach followed by the DAIDALOS project, sponsored by the EU within the Sixth framework Research Programme, for multicast-aware QoS in a heterogeneous end-to-end TCP/IP infrastructure.