Multicast group aggregation methods to decrease IGMP load for IPTV services and their performance evaluation

Shortening the channel change time is a critical issue in Internet protocol television (IPTV), and many methods have been proposed to address this issue. However, since these methods do not take into account the Internet group management protocol (IGMP) load on multicast routers, the number of IGMP packets will increase significantly, which will cause network instability. To investigate the effect of IGMP load, we performed a preliminary experiment that revealed that a multicast router does not work properly when it receives bursts of IGMP packets. To decrease the IGMP load as well as shortening the channel change time, we propose a multicast group aggregation method. Through simulation experiments, we show the effectiveness of the method.