In this master's thesis, a survey has been carried out of the protocols required for the implementation of Internet Protocol (IP) multicasting on top of Asynchronous Transfer Mode (ATM). A method for the description of these network protocols is introduced to present the implementation architecture of the TCP/IP protocol suite. Multicasting, and in particular IP multicasting, is discussed in detail. ATM and its terminology is introduced for later use, as are Local Area Network Emulation (LANE) for ATM and Classical IP and ARP over ATM.
The extensions for IP multicasting on top of ATM, described in RFC 2022
'Support for Multicast over
UNI 3.0/3.1 based ATM Networks.' are
discussed. These extensions are, at the time of writing, the state of
the art for implementing IP multicasting over ATM.
The Linux operating system has been chosen as an implementation platform for this project. The ATM implementation on this platform is discussed and its pros and cons are explained. An overview of the required modifications to integrate support for IP multicasting, based on RFC 2022, on this platform is given as well as recommendations for the continuation of this work.
The result of this work is that an implementor of an IP multicasting over ATM system will be able to quickly get to know the subject using this thesis. If the Linux-ATM system is used for such an implementation, the problems specific to that platform are discussed and should allow the implementor to quickly make a decision of where and how to start.