IPv6 Multicast Improvements - The Plain Truth
IPv6 multicast shares common features and protocols with IPv4 multicast, but also provides changes and improvements. When even the smallest IPv6 global routing prefix is assigned to an organization, the organization is also assigned the use of 4.2 billion globally routable source-specific IPv6 multicast groups to assign for inner-domain or cross-domain multicast applications [ref: RFC 3306]. In IPv4 it was very difficult for an organization to get even one globally routable cross-domain multicast group assignment and implementation of cross-domain solutions was very arcane [ref: RFC 2908]. IPv6 also supports new multicast solutions, including Embedded Rendezvous Point [ref: RFC 3596] which greatly simplifies the deployment of cross domain solutions. The vast multicast spaces available to IPv6-enabled organizations lead to innovative new applications for multicast communities of interest based on task, function, or geo-location.
What’s something new you can do with IPv6 that you can’t do with IPv4? With the massive IPv6 multicast space you can assign groups by geography or geo-spatial coordinates to establish location-based groups. Multicast groups defined based on (or including) geographic and/or geo-spatial coordinates can be referred to generically as geo-multicast groups. Because the multicast groups and network routing for the multicast groups is native to the network protocol employed by IPv6 communications networks, the geo-multicast groups do not require extension of the network routing mechanisms. In other words, by adding geographic context to IPv6 multicast group identifiers, geographic regions as defined by geo-multicast groups can be overlaid onto the communications network without altering the network routing protocol. Previous geo-multicasting schemes, such as Julio Navas and T. Imielinski’s “Geographic Addressing and Routing” [ref: Communications of the ACM, 1999, vol 42] had to create new experimental geo-routing protocols [ref: RFC 2009]. While previous projects rely on specialized routing to achieve geographic information distribution, IPv6 multicast can provide geo-routing support NATIVELY with no new geo-routing protocols needed…
April 20th, 2010 at 5:48 pm
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