Internet Group Management Protocol With Access Control

The Internet Group Management Protocol with Access Control (IGMP-AC) has been designed for incorporating

AAA protocol AAA refers to Authentication (to identify), Authorization (to give permission) and Accounting (to log an audit trail). It is a framework used to control and track access within a computer network. Common network protocols providing this functio ...

functionality in the existing

IP multicast IP multicast is a method of sending Internet Protocol (IP) datagrams to a group of interested receivers in a single transmission. It is the IP-specific form of multicast and is used for streaming media and other network applications. It uses spec ...

model. It will enforce authentication and authorization of an end user or receiver before joining or leaving a secured multicast group. To add AAA functionality, an access router or one-hop router of the receiver will act as a

network access server A network access server (NAS) is a group of components that provides remote users with a point of access to a network. Overview A NAS concentrates dial-in and dial-out user communications. An access server may have a mixture of analog and digita ...

(NAS). IGMP-AC is an extended version of

Internet Group Management Protocol The Internet Group Management Protocol (IGMP) is a communications protocol used by hosts and adjacent routers on IPv4 networks to establish multicast group memberships. IGMP is an integral part of IP multicast and allows the network to direct ...

. It provides a generic client-server authentication protocol, where the receiver or end user will act as a client, the AAA server will act as a server and the access router (one-hop router of the receiver) will perform the forwarding task. Thus, any suitable authentication protocol (e.g.,

Extensible Authentication Protocol Extensible Authentication Protocol (EAP) is an authentication framework frequently used in network and internet connections. It is defined in , which made obsolete, and is updated by . EAP is an authentication framework for providing the transport ...

(EAP)) having client-server entities can be encapsulated over the IGMP-AC architecture. The IGMP-AC will not disrupt the usual function of the IGMPv3 (to be used for classical multicast group), and the access control mechanism of IGMP-AC will take place to join/leave a secured or restricted multicast group only. Internet protocols Internet Standards Internet layer protocols Network layer protocols {{network-stub