Summary

Recommendation ITU-T Y.1544 extends the framework of Recommendation ITU-T Y.1540 to the point‑to‑multipoint, or multicast case. It also expands the key Y.1540 concepts with details needed to define parameters for the point-to-multipoint configuration.

The performance of point-to-multipoint packet transfer to a set of destinations can first be considered a set of point-to-point packet transfers, and characterized using any or all of the point-to-point parameters found in Recommendation ITU-T Y.1540. This Recommendation defines parameters that are specific to the point‑to-multipoint case.

There are three general categories of point-to-multipoint parameters which focus on different entities in this network topology: parameters that describe the Source performance, parameters that describe the performance at one or more Destinations, and parameters that can be applied to describe the performance of subsections of the multicast tree. In its present version, this Recommendation primarily addresses Destination performance.

This Recommendation also specifies a complete set of parameters for the access and disengagement phases of communication. This aspect goes beyond the scope of Recommendation ITU-T Y.1540, which covers only the information transfer phase.