  Emerging ad hoc networks are infrastructure-less networks consisting of
wireless devices with various power constraints, capabilities and mobility
characteristics. An essential capability in future ad hoc networks is the
ability to provide scalable multicast services. This paper presents a novel
adaptive architecture to support multicast services in large-scale wide-area ad
hoc networks. Existing works on multicast in ad hoc networks address only small
size networks. Our main design goals are scalability, robustness and
efficiency. We propose a self-configuring hierarchy extending zone-based
routing with the notion of contacts based on the small world graphs phenomenon
and new metrics of stability and mobility. We introduce a new geographic-based
multicast address allocation scheme coupled with adaptive anycast based on
group popularity. Our scheme is the first of its kind and promises efficient
and robust operation in the common case. Also, based on the new concept of
rendezvous regions, we provide a bootstrap mechanism for the multicast service;
a challenge generally ignored in previous work.
