Communication satellites offer an efficient way to extend IP multicast services for groups in wide-area networks. This poses interesting challenges for routing and security. Satellite networks can have wired and wireless links and different link-layer technologies like Ethernet and ATM. For security, the multicast traffic should be restricted to legitimate receivers, which can be achieved by data encryption. This requires secure and efficient methods to manage the encryption keys. This thesis attempts to solve the above problems for secure multicast in wide-area networks that have Ethernet LANs interconnected by ATM-based satellite channels. The thesis reviews the multicast services offered by 1P and ATM and proposes a multicast routing framework for hybrid satellite networks. The thesis also investigates current group key management protocols, and designs a scheme for secure and scalable key management for the proposed multicast architecture. The various proposed schemes are presented in detail, along with analysis and simulation results.
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