Integrated fault-tolerant multicast and anycast routing algorithms

Abstract

Anycast is a new communication service defined in IPv6 (Internet Protocol Version 6 for the next generation). An anycast message is the one that should be delivered to the 'nearest' member in a group of designated recipients. Anycast and multicast mechanisms may be integrated to provide better services. A group of replicated (or mirrored) servers that provides anycast service may also provide multicast services and needs multicast to consistently update, whereas anycast routing may help a multicast request to reach the 'nearest' member in a multicast group. A novel integration routing protocol is presented for both multicast and anycast messages communications in the Internet. The protocol is composed of four algorithms: (1) dynamic anycast routing algorithm for efficient transmission of anycast messages over the Internet to a group of servers. (2) integrated anycast routing with core-based tree technique based on multicast routing algorithms taking advantage of short delay, high throughput and load sharing. (3) Fault-tolerant algorithms for both anycast and multicast routing using backup paths restoring techniques. The performance figures have demonstrated the benefits of anycast routing in reducing end-to-end packet delay, and attaining load balance and fault-tolerance for multicast.