A hierarchical architecture for a scalable multicast

Multimedia applications, such as videoconferences, require an efficient management of the Quality of Service (QoS) and consist of a great number of participants. In order to support such applications, we propose a hierarchical architecture allowing efficient communication between disjoint local groups. To connect these groups, we use a shared-based tree method. For an effective evaluation, we compare it to a source-based tree method. With NS-2 simulations, we show that the two methods are better than the direct architecture. Shared-based tree method performs well when using dynamically several rendezvous points instead of unique and static point. The performances are the reduction of used bandwidth and the communications delays.