TDBMA - A novel multicast algorithm for IPv6-based mobile networks

IP multicasting has naturally been considered the ideal technique to be used with multimedia communications but is difficult to mobile hosts due to the addition of mobility in the host group. In this paper, we propose a novel multicast algorithm, namely time and distance-based multicast algorithm (TDBMA), for IPv6-based mobile networks. TDBMA intends to trade off between the shortest delivery path and the frequency of the multicast tree reconfiguration. When a mobile host (MH) moves into a new foreign network which is managed by a foreign network router and re-subscribes to an existing multicast tree, the foreign network router uses the TDBMA to determine whether the MH joins the multicast tree directly or receives the tunneled multicast packets from its home agent (HA). The TDBMA is subject to two key factors, called time and distance. The visited foreign network router can join the multicast tree directly only when the value of both time and distance is true. The simulation results have shown that TDBMA has better performance than other algorithms, especially in the case where the number of MHs is large.