RAMA (Root Addressed Multicast Architecture) Chair(s): Jon Crowcroft Christophe Diot Cheng-Yin Lee Routing Area Director(s): David Oran Rob Coltun Routing Area Advisor: Rob Coltun Mailing Lists: General Discussion: sm-interest@cs.ucl.ac.uk To subscribe: Description of Working Group: The primary goal of the group is to develop specifications that will ease the scaling (in the longer term) of current multicast routing protocols targeted for these type of applications: * Internet wide information distribution (eg 'webcast', content subscription/distribution) * Internet wide interactive information exchange (eg conferencing/discussion, games). The approach taken will allow the root (source or core) of the multicast distribution tree to allocate logical addresses that can be used to address multicast groups. Since address management is local to the root, it will not require Internet wide coordination and will also facilitate applications to use the address space in a creative and application specific manner (eg content filtering/naming, layered data) where applicable. The scope of work is as follows: * extend the current multicast API to use this new addressing - the group multicast address will consist of both the root (source or core) of the multicast tree and a multicast address. * extend the current multicast data forwarding to forward based on . The address encoding should allow : - routers which do not understand this new addressing to forward packets non natively (unicast) - current hardware to forward packet with this new addressing when the root is the source of the multicast group in the initial implementation and deployment, - for hardware to be upgraded to forward packet with the core as root. * changes to control messages will be defined generically in TLV format. The group will coordinate with the respective WGs for these extensions to be implemented in PIM/CBT/BGMP and expect to liase with the respective WGs on the following documents: - PIM with RAMA extensions - BGMP with RAMA extensions - CBT with RAMA extensions * migration/interoperability issues related to the above Goals and Milestones: Jul 99 Specify goals and deliverables Oct 99 Issue first Internet-Drafts (Host API, IGMP change, RAMA routing) on extensions to IP multicast Dec 99 Achieve concensus on the extensions Mar 00 Issue detailed specifications on host and router extensions Apr 00 Liason work with other WGs Nov 00 Submit specifications to IESG as proposed standards Internet-Drafts: * "Multicast Requirements for the Definition of New IP Multicast Services" Christophe Diot, Bryan Lyles, Sprint ATL Brian Neil Levine, Consultant, Sprint ATL Ramanan Shanmugam, Amir Tabdili, Hassan Kassem, Sprintlink * "Simple Multicast", Perlman et al * Express , H Holbrook, D. Cheriton, Sigcomm Paper