Flexible connection control for multimedia broadband networks

In order to offer multimedia services to the user, a powerful signaling system for broadband networks is required. Our work aims at an overall signaling architecture with totally independent call and connection control. This paper focuses on MCMP (multicast connection management protocol), a connection control solution that can be used in this context. MCMP offers a uniform interface to the terminals and network nodes. Its distinction between signaling and transport entities allows the mapping to different broadband technologies. Multicast connections can be controlled dynamically. This includes the change of topology and QoS parameters of the connections during their lifetime. Multicast routing is done by a distributed shortest path tree based solution, which has several advantages over Steiner tree routing.