Multicast in a point-to point oriented packet-switched telecommunication network

摘要

The invention relates to a method, network node, router, serving node and system for performing multicast in a point to point oriented telecommunication network. The basic idea is to introduce multicast transmission for parts of a network that is basically point-to-point oriented. This is done by creating transport multicast group tunnels between a router and a serving node in order to transport the multicast data. This invention describes the application of multicasting in point to point networks, such as UMTS with a scarce number of resources. In a mobile environment like in UMTS the idea could be implemented by using IP multicast for efficient transmission in the IP network between the SEGSN and GGSN for example on the Gn interface.