Differentiated QoS multicast based on the Source Specific Multicast (SSM) model

In this paper we propose a new scheme named Differentiated QoS Multicast (DQM) based on the Source Specific Multicast (SSM) model in order to provision limited qualitative QoS channels for supporting heterogeneous end users. Based on Service Level Agreements, both sources and group members should select a specific QoS channel available from the network for group data transmission, and arbitrarily quantitative QoS states are eliminated. Moreover, we use the group address G contained in the (S;G) tuple in the SSM service model to encode QoS channels, and data packets belonging to the same QoS channel identified by a common class D address can be treated aggregately within core networks. Hence the proposed DQM scheme can be regarded as an overlay solution to single source multicast applications.