###### Abstract  
Many bandwidth-intensive applications (such as online live, online games, etc.) are more suitable for using multicast to transmit information. Due to the advantages in scalability, Shared Tree (ST) is more suitable for large-scale deployment than Source-Based Tree (SBT). However, in ST-based multicast, all multicast sources need to send multicast data to a center node called a core, which will lead to core overload and traffic concentration. Besides, most existing multicast protocols use the shortest path between the source or the core and each receiver to construct the multicast tree, which will result in traffic overload on some links. In this paper, we propose an Identifier and Locator Decoupled Multicast approach (ILDM) based on Information-Centric Networking (ICN). ILDM uses globally unique names to identify multicast services. For each multicast service, the mapping between the multicast service name and the addresses of multicast tree nodes is stored in the Name Resolution System (NRS). To avoid core overload and traffic aggregation, we presented a dynamic core management and selection mechanism, which can dynamically select a low-load core for each multicast service. Furthermore, we designed a path state-aware multicast tree node selection mechanism to achieve traffic load balancing by using low-load links more effectively. Experimental results showed that our proposed multicast approach outperformed some other multicast methods in terms of core load, number of join requests, link load, traffic concentration, and routing state. m 2021 2020 6 January 202  
to maintain a multicast flow state for each source. Instead, the ST establishes a single shared multicast tree for all sources in the multicast group, whose root is called a core or Rendezvous Point (RP). Compared with SBT, a significant advantage of ST is that only one multicast flow state is required for each group. Therefore, ST has better scalability and more adoption than SBT. However, in the ST, the core receives multicast flows from all sources, which makes the core usually overloaded and traffic concentrated. The traffic concentration problem is even worsened in both SBT and ST, since both SBT and ST use the shortest paths between source or core and receivers to form the multicast tree [7]. Different multicast trees may reuse some links, causing these links to be overloaded while some other links have no multicast traffic at all. Due to the dynamics and randomness of the joining and leaving of receivers, the IP multicast methods cannot optimize the path for each receiver. Traditional IP networks establish end-to-end connections by using IP addresses of end nodes. The IP address acts as both the identifier of the information and the locator of the end node. The problem of IP semantic overload has caused serious limitations in supporting mobility, scalability, security, etc. In the IP multicast, the multicast IP address is only used for identifying a group and is not utilized to locate a receiver. Due to the limited space of multicast IP addresses, IP multicast requires a complicated mechanism (such as MASC [8]) to allocate and manage multicast IP addresses, which severely limits the large-scale deployment of IP multicast. Information-Centric Networking (ICN) [9; 10; 11] is a clean-slate network architecture that aims to overcome the problems in current IP networks. ICN names the information to separate the identity and location and uses the corresponding name to replace the IP address as the identifier in network transmission. Some ICN solutions deploy clean-slate ICN, such as Content Centric Networking (CCN) [12], Named Data Networking (NDN) [13; 14] and Publish Subscribe Internet Technology (PURSUIT) [15], however, the high-cost limits the deployment of the clean-slate ICN solutions. Some other ICN solutions can coexist with existing IP networks to achieve incremental deployments, such as Data-Oriented Network Architecture (DONA) [16], the Network of Information (NetInf) [17], and MobilityFirst [18].