A comparison of network and application layer multicast for mobile IPv6 networks

Abstract

In this paper we compare Network (IP multicast) and Application Layer Multicast (ALM) under a specific assumption: end hosts are wireless devices using the Mobile IPv6 (MIPv6) protocol. This comparison has three main goals. First, we analyze the implications of running multicast in a mobile, wireless network using Mobile IPv6 (MIPv6). Second, we run a number of simulations to verify whether the network performance issues are different than in wired networks. Finally, using these results, we try to identify the factors that have the most significant impact on performance. Our results indicate that although ALM can be designed to work on top of a wireless network running MIPv6, there are a number of additional performance penalties beyond what occurs in wired networks. Essentially, the advantage of using IP multicast grows even stronger in mobile networks. Nevertheless, we recognize that there are significant barriers to ubiquitous network layer multicast and therefore believe that a more hybrid approach combining both IP multicast and ALM would offer the best performance.