The Multicast Service enables customers to transmit and receive data using multicast routing. It more efficiently uses existing infrastructure and therefore allows scaling to meet larger requirements with less infrastructure. Network devices replicate and distribute multicast content to all hosts that are actively listening to a particular multicast group. Routers employ Protocol Independent Multicast (PIM) to build distribution trees for transmitting content, allowing for a more efficient delivery of data to multiple simultaneous receivers. Multicast offers the ability to consolidate duplicative data transmissions, increases bandwidth efficiency across the DISN, and reduces server and network device loads within the customer enclave.
Multicast will support Quality of Service (QoS) classes for priority handling.
IP Multicast allows the sender to simultaneously route a single stream of data from one data source to multiple, select destinations. The ability to transmit a single stream of data versus multiple redundant streams of data reduces the capacity requirement of the customer’s interface and processing requirements of customer’s network devices. In general, bandwidth and resource efficiencies increase as the number of receivers increases.