Abstract
Multicast is a way of grouping receivers and
optimizing bandwidth utilization. Introducing multicast in Mobile Ad
Hoc Networks (MANETs) appears more challenging than providing
multicast services in the fixed Internet, since multicast services
designed for conventional (wired) networks may not be applicable to
MANETs. Experiments have shown that in many MANET scenarios, simple
broadcasting or flooding techniques can be a better choice than
multicast, since the cost of building and maintaining a multicast
tree may exhaust the benefit one can get from such a tree.
In this master thesis, the design and implementation of a multicast
mechanism in MANETs that uses optimized flooding technique is
presented. A set of experiments has been conducted based on the
implemented testbed, for a standalone MANET, and some useful
numerical results have been obtained. Furthermore, the thesis has
proposed a solution to further provide multicast services to a MANET
which is connected to an existing multicast network, e.g., the
Multicast Backbone that is on the Internet.