Next-generation Internet providers face high expectations, as contemporary users worldwide expect high-quality multimedia functionality in a landscape of ever-expanding network applications. This volume explores the critical research issue of turning today's greatly enhanced hardware capacity to good use in designing a scalable multicast protocol for supporting large-scale multimedia services. Linking new hardware to improved performance in the Internet's next incarnation is a research hot-spot in the computer communications field.

The methodical presentation deals with the key questions in turn: from the mechanics of multicast protocols to current state-of-the-art designs, and from methods of theoretical analysis of these protocols to applying them in the ns2 network simulator, known for being hard to extend. The authors' years of research in the field inform this thorough treatment, which covers details such as applying AOM (application-oriented multicast) protocol to IPTV provision and resolving the practical design issues thrown up in creating scalable AOM multicast service models.