SEAM: An architecture for scalable and efficient ATM multipoint-to-multipoint communication

This paper proposes a multipoint-to-multipoint multicast architecture for ATM networks. The necessity for such an architecture stems from the scalability requirements, both in terms of state to be maintained in the network and in terms of the group population dynamics, of a wide range of networking applications including distributed interactive simulation (DIS), distributed databases and games, web caches and efficient support of IP multicasting. Our proposal, SEAM, uses a single VC for a multicast group consisting of multiple senders and receivers. SEAM relies on an additional switching feature called cut-through forwarding, which enables the mapping of several incoming VCs into one or several outgoing VCs. We believe that SEAM is both an important and necessary step in the evolution of ATM. It will enable applications relying on group multicast to benefit from ATM's quality of service support and scalable bandwidth.