QS-XCAST: A QoS Aware XCAST Implementation

Explicit multiunicast (XCAST) is a complementary protocol that can solve the scalability problems of IP multicast by providing a stateless design that encapsulates multicast information in an IP packet header. There is a need to test new protocols like XCAST with network simulators that offer models which can scale to a large number of nodes. However, existing simulators like OMNeT++ do not have IP header encapsulation and routing models required for analyzing XCAST, especially its implementation on IPv6 protocol stack, called XCAST6. Further, XCAST is designed for applications such as videoconferencing and IPTV systems that are loss and delay sensitive hence they need some form of QoS provisioning. However, most research in XCAST is only focus on its performance and implementation, ignoring the important facet of QoS assurance. In this paper we describe the implementation of XCAST6 on the IPv6 protocol stack of INET Framework for use with OMNeT++. We also extend the QoS classes in INET Framework to allow for simulation of XCAST6 integrated with Differentiated Services architecture for QoS provisioning. This paper therefore also serves to open up research for XCAST QoS provisioning.