Communication environments are becoming increasingly heterogeneous. This imposes new challenges on communication support for multimedia and collaborative applications. The goal of AMnet (Active Multicasting Network) is to provide multi-point communication support for large-scale groups with heterogeneous receivers.

AMnet especially addresses the aspect of heterogenous group communication. It is based on the Active Networking paradigm in the sense that it uses active multicasting nodes inside the network in order to individually tailor data streams to the end users service requirements. Therefore, various service modules shall be dynamically implanted in network nodes. QoS filter and error control modules are typical examples.