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Multicast communication will be the communication paradigm of future networks. Secure multicasting is a challenging issue. The main objective of secure multicasting is to distribute the group key to the current members of the group in a scalable manner with minimum overheads. The key distribution methods can be either centralized or distributed. Of these, the centralized methods are simple and robust. In the centralized models, the central controller is an important entity that takes care of key distribution and management. The burden on the central controller is very significant in the centralized models due to the overheads incurred by key distribution. To reduce the load on the central controller, a grouping mechanism based on the behavior of members and a novel key distribution pattern is employed. With this approach, the storage efficiency is improved and the communication bounds are preserved. A comparison in terms of the performance parameters, such as storage and communication updates of the proposed key tree, is made here between our model and the existing architectures. Our model has been simulated, and the results have been found to be optimal.

Keywords: multicast security, group key, communication efficiency, storage efficiency, key distribution

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Received April 26, 2004; revised March 10, 2005; accepted May 2, 2005.
Communicated by Shiuhpyng Shieh.