Abstract

There are many use cases where applied multicast concepts can have a huge impact on application performance. Especially in data centers huge amounts of data can be transferred through the network using multicast techniques. The problem with multicast is scalability - routers have to keep track of multicast forwarding states and often can’t handle huge amounts of multicast groups. In this paper we examine different approaches enhancing the overall performance of multicast and compare them to each other. First we are going to look at tree-building multicast algorithms like REUNITE operating from routers. Another approach is injecting the multicast logic into the sender right beneath the application layer like DR. MULTICAST does. Lastly we examine how multicast can be easily approached with software defined networking.