Chapter # MOBILE MULTICAST Group communications in a wireless Internet

INTRODUCTION During the late-1990s, the popularity of Internet applications like B2C (business-to-consumer) e-commerce and web-browsing led traditional network operators to seek ways which allowed their customers to access these new services. Today (2002), IP-based packet switching technology has finally matured enough to replace the circuit-switched backbones of telecommunication carriers. Convergence on the IP protocol is now happening and it will continue to happen throughout this decade. It is obvious that this one common protocol will ease the management of all wired and wireless data networks. IP will also fuel the deployment of novel applications. An important feature these applications will expect from an allIP internetwork is full support for multipoint communications. Multipoint, or group, communications are best described by the term multicast, a term associated with network support for efficient data delivery to more than one interested recipients. Multicast's objective i