Algorithm for an oriented multicast routing protocol

An increasing number of Internet applications and services will require the use of multicast in the near future. However, only a few techniques are currently used in network-layer multicast routing protocols, such as flooding, pruning or reverse path construction methods. We propose an algorithm to define a new way of multicasting. The base principle is to perform a limited multicast channeled around the unicast path joining the sender to a specific destination, hence the name “oriented”. This algorithm is close to reverse path multicast algorithms but the flooding is much more controlled. A protocol based on our algorithm could have many applications such as performing network node searches in a specific area. The algorithm is tailored as to be scalable to enable its use in an inter-domain environment