Secure and scalable inter-domain group key management for N-to-N multicast

The paper contributes a new architecture for secure and scalable inter-domain group key management for N-to-N (conference) IP multicast. The architecture views the multicast routing infrastructure from the key management plane, and logically divides it into two general types of regions for key management to achieve scalability. The work extends the centralized solution of (Wong et al., 1998) into a distributed key management scheme suitable for inter-domain multicast group key management. Methods for initiating new multicast groups, as well as for members joining and leaving, are presented. The paper also considers two general types of IP-multicast that need to be made secure if multicast is to be one of the vehicles for future wide-scale delivery of voice, video and text over the Internet.