The Multicast Address-Set Claim (MASC) Protocol

This document describes the Multicast Address-Set Claim (MASC) protocol which can be used for inter-domain multicast address set allocation.  MASC is used by a node (typically a router) to claim and allocate one or more address prefixes to that node’s domain.  While a domain does not necessarily need to allocate an address set for hosts in that domain to be able to allocate group addresses, allocating an address set to the domain does ensure that inter-domain group- specific distribution trees will be locally-rooted, and that traffic will be sent outside the domain only when and where external receivers exist.