[IRTF-Announce] New IRTF RG chartered--Scalable Adaptive Multicast (SAM) RG

[Aaron Falk <[e-mail]>]

A new IRTF research group, Scalable Adaptive Multicast (SAM)
Research Group, has begun, with the appended charter.
Use sam-request at irtf.org to subscribe
to the mailing list.  See http://www.samrg.org for
further information.

John Buford & Jeremy Mineweaser

========================================================================

   The Scalable Adaptive Multicast (SAM) Research Group is chartered
   to explore and research techniques which improve multicast
   performance with respect to dimensions such as number of groups,
   dynamics of group membership, dynamics of the network topology, and
   network resource constraints.  The RG will investigate approaches
   based on application layer multicast (ALM), overlay multicast (OM),
   and native IP multicast, as well as hybrid approaches.  A key design
   consideration is the placement of multicast state information along
   the multicast path, including packet headers, end hosts, and network
   nodes, where placement may be determined adaptively.

   In SAM architectures, new protocols are expected to coexist and
   integrate with native IP multicast protocols while offering more
   flexible deployment options and scaling to support a greater number
   of simultaneous multicast groups.  Alternative technologies such as
   end-system multicast and overlay multicast have been demonstrated,
   but these mechanisms must be integrated into a unified architecture
   and operational design.

   Among the challenges to be addressed are: multicasting in topologies
   with concatenated VPNs, such as the Global Information Grid (GIG);
   ability to incorporate QoS mechanisms while retaining scalability;
   integration with network- and application-layer security mechanisms;
   and adaptation schemes which consider group-related factors, such as
   group size, number of sources, membership dynamics, sensitivity
   to delay, amount of state, state update rate, application data rate,
   and other application-specific parameters, as well as network-related
   factors, such as dynamics of topology, carrying capacity, and
connectivity.

   Methods will be explored for group formation and discovery that
   scale to large numbers of groups, accommodate highly dynamic group
   membership, and support user-initiated small-group multicast in
   which the group is defined as a set of explicitly addressed
   endpoints.  Further challenges include efficient multicast for
   limited-resource nodes and access links, control mechanisms for
   hybrid systems, approaches to optimization in the network, including
   routing, and operation in mobile networks, including Mobile Ad-hoc
   Networks (MANETs).

   Deploying, diagnosing, debugging, and managing multicast services is
   complex, particularly for services which span multiple administrative
   domains.  The RG will propose and evaluate tools and strategies for
   deployment, operations, and management of SAM services.

   The RG will select candidates for analysis and evaluation from
   existing research results.  Researchers are invited to submit new
   approaches for further investigation.  Through experimentation, the
   RG seeks to deepen its understanding of the solution space and to
   enable the identification of preferred solutions as a function of
   dynamic network characteristics and the number of multicast sources,
   receivers, and groups.

   The expected findings of the RG include characterizing the problem
   space, including driving scenarios, comparisons and analysis of
   existing approaches, a SAM framework that supports multiple ALM/OM/
   native/hybrid protocols, analysis of network infrastructure impact
   when multicast traffic becomes a dominant flow in a network, and
   deployment scenarios which are independent of but can support and
   evolve with network infrastructure support for native multicast.
   The findings are expected to be published in technical reports,
   academic papers, and/or RFCs.



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