Mbone

As Multicast Backbone, MBone or MBONE is called a 1992 installed extension of the normal Internet Protocol (IP version 4), which operates on the multicasting method and is mainly used for video and audio conferencing. This is a multicast application such as Internet Talk Radio.

Architecture

The MBONE consists of multicasting enabled computers and routers on the Internet. Since the conventional, used in Internet routers are not multicast enabled, multicast -enabled subnets remain on the internet isolated and form so-called multicasting Islands. These islands can by tunneling, so by encapsulating a multicast packet to be a unicast packet, and thus form bridged a global multicast network, the MBONE.

About the high-speed networks of the Internet can be transmitted by means of the Internet Multicast Protocols extensive video and audio data. A feature of this protocol is that the compressed and digitized data can be transferred to different subscribers at the same time without the network load increases linearly with the number of participants. This means, in practice, for example, that one registers are interested in an offer not to the server, but the net with its multicast address as a member of this group who use an application such as a video conference together.