Rosenberg provides an overview of multicast routing, a technique that is very useful yet not easily deployable on a large scale in today’s networks. Multicast routing is more complex than unicast routing, though the background of the routing algorithms is similar: “Whereas unicast routing determines a path from one source node to one destination node, multicast routing determines a path from one source to many destinations, or from many sources to many destinations[, and those destinations may be static or dynamic]” (from the summary of the book on the publisher’s site (http://www.springer.com/computer/communication+networks/book/978-1-4614-1872-6)). New multicast routing protocols have gradually been developed, and currently there exist numerous solutions that fortunately share some common ground.

The brief comprises seven chapters. After the basics of multicast routing, the author presents relevant concepts. First, the most frequent tree-based methods, concepts, and intradomain dynamic routing methods are described, including the distance vector multicast routing protocol (DVMRP), the multicast open shortest path first (MOSPF) protocol, and protocol-independent multicast (PIM) methods. Among other multicast routing methods, the author presents a gossip-based method, automatic Internet protocol (IP) multicast, distributor delay-constrained multicast routing, and an ant-based method for wireless mobile ad hoc networks (MANETs). Interdomain multicast routing is represented by the multiprotocol border gateway protocol (M-BGP). Two-level multicast routing is also reviewed, and a chapter is devoted to aggregate multicast trees. In the last part, Rosenberg introduces multicast virtual private networks (VPNs). He covers some methods no longer used in order to provide perspective on the evolution of the technology.

The book includes a list of acronyms and an extensive set of references. Reading the book requires a good knowledge of routing principles and protocols in IP networks. According to the publisher’s site, the book focuses on “algorithmic principles, and mathematical models, rather than implementation-level protocol details.” Therefore, the readers most likely to benefit from it are not network engineers, but rather multicast researchers, routing specialists, network developers, and graduate students interested in the topic.