A Scalable Architecture for Broadcast Federation

Several protocols have been proposed to enable efficient multi-point communication (multicast or broadcast) both at the IP layer and at the application or overlay layer. However, no single protocol is universally deployed. Instead, we expect the existence of islands of non-interoperable broadcast connectivity. In the absence of a scheme to share broadcast connectivity across these "islands", clients in an island cannot receive broadcast information from sources in a different island. To address this situation, we propose an architecture that enables the composition of different multicast- or broadcast-capable networks, each with their own internally deployed multicast or broadcast protocols, to provide an end-to-end broadcast service. We call this architecture the Broadcast Federation. This architectur