Optimal Multicasting of Multiple Light-Trees of Different Bandwidth Granularities in a WDM Mesh Network With Sparse Splitting Capabilities

With the advent of next-generation, bandwidth-intensive multimedia applications such as HDTV, interactive distance learning, and movie broadcasts from studios, it is becoming imperative to exploit the enormous bandwidth promised by the rapidly growing wavelength-division-multiplexing (WDM) technology. These applications require multicasting of information from a source to several destination nodes which should be performed judiciously to conserve expensive network resources. In this study, we investigate two switch architectures to support multicasting in a WDM network: one using an opaque (optical-electronic-optical approach and the other using a transparent (all-optical) approach. For both these switch architectures, we present mathematical formulations for routing and wavelength assignment of several light-tree-based multicast sessions on a given network topology at a globally optimal cost. We expand our work to also accommodate: 1) fractional-capacity sessions (where a session's capacity is a fraction of a wavelength channel's bandwidth, thereby leading to “traffic-groomed” multicast sessions) and 2) sparse splitting constraints, i.e., limited fanout of optical splitters and limited number of such splitters at each node. We illustrate the solutions obtained on different networks by solving these optimization problems, which turn out to be mixed integer linear programs (MILPs). Because the MILP is computationally intensive and does not scale well for large problem sizes, we also propose fast heuristics for establishing a set of multicast sessions in a network with or without wavelength converters and with fractional-capacity sessions. We find that, for all scenarios, the heuristics which arrange the sessions in ascending order with respect to destination set size and/or cost perform better in terms of network resource usage than the heuristics which arrange the sessions in descending order.     

Independent-Tree Ad hoc MulticAst Routing (ITAMAR)

Multicasting is an efficient means of one to many communication and is typically implemented by creating a multicasting tree. Because of the severe battery power and transmission bandwidth limitations in ad hoc networks, multicast routing can significantly improve the performance of this type of network. However, due to the frequent and hard-to-predict topological changes of ad hoc networks, maintenance of a multicasting tree to ensure its availability could be a difficult task. We borrow from the concept of Alternate Path routing, which has been studied for providing QOS routing, effective congestion control, security, and route failure protection, to propose a scheme in which a set of multicasting trees is continuously maintained. In our scheme, a tree is used until it fails, at which time it is replaced by an alternative tree in the set, so that the time between failure of a tree and resumption of multicast routing is minimal. In this paper, we introduce the basic scheme, termed ITAMAR, which is a framework for efficient multicasting in ad hoc networks. We present a number of heuristics that could be used in ITAMAR to compute a set of alternate trees. The heuristics are then compared in terms of transmission cost, improvement in the average time between multicast failures and the probability of usefulness. Simulations show significant gains over a wide range of network operational conditions. In particular, we show that using alternate trees has the potential of improving mean time between interruption by 100–600% in a 50 node network (for most multicast group sizes) with small increase in the tree cost and the route discovery overhead. We show that by renewing the backup tree set, probability of interruptions can be kept at a minimum at all times and that allowing some overlap among trees in the backup set increases the mean time between interruptions.     

无线Mesh网络可靠多播路由

无线Mesh网络多播路由是无线路由必须解决的关键技术。部分研究者对网络资源和服务质量（QoS）进行研究,提出了建立最短路径树、最小开销树、负载感知、信道分配多播等多播算法;有的算法考虑链路可靠性,建立备用路径。将结合网络资源和可靠性对多播路由算法进行研究,提出了建立可靠多播树（RT,Reliable Tree）的多播路由算法：可靠多播树是一个多树结构,由一棵首选多播树和一棵多径树构成,多径树提供可靠多路径,以提高网络吞吐量。     

QoS multicast routing by using multiple paths/trees in wireless ad hoc networks

In this paper, we investigate the issues of QoS multicast routing in wireless ad hoc networks. Due to limited bandwidth of a wireless node, a QoS multicast call could often be blocked if there does not exist a single multicast tree that has the requested bandwidth, even though there is enough bandwidth in the system to support the call. In this paper, we propose a new multicast routing scheme by using multiple paths or multiple trees to meet the bandwidth requirement of a call. Three multicast routing strategies are studied, SPT (shortest path tree) based multiple-paths (SPTM), least cost tree based multiple-paths (LCTM) and multiple least cost trees (MLCT). The final routing tree(s) can meet the user’s QoS requirements such that the delay from the source to any destination node shall not exceed the required bound and the aggregate bandwidth of the paths or trees shall meet the bandwidth requirement of the call. Extensive simulations have been conducted to evaluate the performance of our three multicast routing strategies. The simulation results show that the new scheme improves the call success ratio and makes a better use of network resources.     

A novel efficient multicast routing algorithm in sparse splitting optical networks

The advances in wavelength-division multiplexing (WDM) technology are expected to facilitate bandwidth-intensive multicast applications through light splitting. Due to complexity and cost constraints, light splitting (or optical multicast) nodes are sparsely configured in a practical WDM network. In this article, we investigate the multicast routing problem under the sparse light-splitting constraint. An efficient sparse splitting constrained multicast routing algorithm called Multicast Capable Node First Heuristic (MCNFH) is proposed. The key idea of MCNFH is to include the shortest path, that includes most of the multicast capable nodes, for configuring the multicast tree. Simulations and comparisons are used to demonstrate the performance of MCNFH. Simulation results and analysis show that MCNFH builds multicast trees with the least wavelength channel cost and with the smallest number of wavelengths used per link. In addition, MCNFH requires only one transmitter at the source node.     

Avoidance of multicast incapable branching nodes for multicast routing in WDM networks

In this article we study the multicast routing problem in all-optical WDM networks under the spare light splitting constraint. To implement a multicast session, several light-trees may have to be used due to the limited fanouts of network nodes. Although many multicast routing algorithms have been proposed in order to reduce the total number of wavelength channels used (total cost) for a multicast session, the maximum number of wavelengths required in one fiber link (link stress) and the end-to-end delay are two parameters which are not always taken into consideration. It is known that the shortest path tree (SPT) results in the optimal end-to-end delay, but it can not be employed directly for multicast routing in sparse light splitting WDM networks. Hence, we propose a novel wavelength routing algorithm which tries to avoid the multicast incapable branching nodes (MIBs, branching nodes without splitting capability) in the shortest-path-based multicast tree to diminish the link stress. Good parts of the shortest-path-tree are retained by the algorithm to reduce the end-to-end delay. The algorithm consists of tree steps: (1) a DijkstraPro algorithm with priority assignment and node adoption is introduced to produce a SPT with up to 38% fewer MIB nodes in the NSF topology and 46% fewer MIB nodes in the USA Longhaul topology, (2) critical articulation and deepest branch heuristics are used to process the MIB nodes, (3) a distance-based light-tree reconnection algorithm is proposed to create the multicast light-trees. Extensive simulations demonstrate the algorithm’s efficiency in terms of link stress and end-to-end delay.     

Scalable Multicasting: The Core-Assisted Mesh Protocol

Most of the multicast routing protocols for ad hoc networks today are based on shared or source-based trees; however, keeping a routing tree connected for the purpose of data forwarding may lead to a substantial network overhead. A different approach to multicast routing consists of building a shared mesh for each multicast group. In multicast meshes, data packets can be accepted from any router, as opposed to trees where data packets are only accepted from routers with whom a tree branch has been established. The difference among multicast routing protocols based on meshes is in the method used to build these structures. Some mesh-based protocols require the flooding of sender or receiver announcements over the whole network. This paper presents the Core-Assisted Mesh Protocol, which uses meshes for data forwarding, and avoids flooding by generalizing the notion of core-based trees introduced for internet multicasting. Group members form the mesh of a group by sending join requests to a set of cores. Simulation experiments show that meshes can be used effectively as multicast routing structures without the need for flooding control packets.     

An integrated routing and admission control mechanism for real‐time multicast connection establishment

There are two major difficulties in real‐time multicast connection setup. One is the design of an efficient distributed routing algorithm which optimizes the network cost of routing trees under the real‐time constraints. The other is the integration of routing with admission control into one single phase of operations. This paper presents a real‐time multicast connection setup mechanism, which integrates multicast routing with real‐time admission control. The proposed mechanism performs the real‐time admission tests on a cost optimal tree (COT) and a shortest path tree (SPT) in parallel, aiming at optimizing network cost of the routing tree under real‐time constraints. It has the following important features: (1) it is fully distributed; (2) it achieves sub‐optimal network cost of routing trees; (3) it takes less time and less network messages for a connection setup. Copyright © 2001 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

A Novel Shared Segment Protection Algorithm for Multicast Sessions in Mesh WDM Networks

This paper investigates the problem of protecting multicast sessions in mesh wavelength‐division multiplexing (WDM) networks against single link failures, for example, a fiber cut in optical networks. First, we study the two characteristics of multicast sessions in mesh WDM networks with sparse light splitter configuration. Traditionally, a multicast tree does not contain any circles, and the first characteristic is that a multicast tree has better performance if it contains some circles. Note that a multicast tree has several branches. If a path is added between the leave nodes on different branches, the segment between them on the multicast tree is protected. Based the two characteristics, the survivable multicast sessions routing problem is formulated into an Integer Linear Programming (ILP). Then, a heuristic algorithm, named the adaptive shared segment protection (ASSP) algorithm, is proposed for multicast sessions. The ASSP algorithm need not previously identify the segments for a multicast tree. The segments are determined during the algorithm process. Comparisons are made between the ASSP and two other reported schemes, link disjoint trees (LDT) and shared disjoint paths (SDP), in terms of blocking probability and resource cost on CERNET and USNET topologies. Simulations show that the ASSP algorithm has better performance than other existing schemes.     

Dynamic Host-Group/Multi-Destination Routing for Multicast Sessions

Multicast routing research efforts have mostly focused on supporting the host-group model in which multicast packets are addressed to a host (or multicast) group. Another multicast routing approach uses multi-destination addressing, where a multicast packet carries a list of the unique (unicast) addresses of all the group members. This form of routing can be accomplished using limited or no additional state beyond the existing unicast routing tables. It, therefore, scales well with the number of multicast sessions but does not scale well with the size of the multicast group and, in fact, requires the size of the multicast group to be below a certain threshold. In this paper, we envision a future scenario in which both host-group and multi-destination addressing routing approaches coexist within the Internet. We develop a dynamic routing context for this future scenario wherein a multicast session can adapt among different routing configurations depending on the number of multicast group members and how this number changes over time. We consider three routing options: (1) A single multi-destination addressed flow – suitable for small-group sessions, (2) multiple multi-destination addressed flows – suitable for medium-group sessions and (3) a single host-group addressed flow – suitable for large-group sessions. For multicast sessions that vary in group membership over time, different routing protocols may be best at different points in time. Our work is concerned with the development and evaluation of protocols that allow a multicast session to dynamically switch among these three routing options as the size of the session changes.     

Multicast routing, load balancing, and wavelength assignment ontree of rings

There are two steps to establish a multicast connection in WDM networks: routing and wavelength assignment. The shortest path tree (SPT) and minimum spanning tree (MST) are the two widely used multicast routing methods. The SPT method minimizes the delay from the source to every destination along a routing tree, and the MST method is often used to minimize the network cost of the tree. Load balancing is an important objective in multicast routing, which minimizes the maximal link load in the system. The objective of wavelength assignment is to minimize the number of wavelengths used in the system. This paper analyzes the performance of the shortest path tree (SPT) and minimum spanning tree (MST) methods in the tree of ring networks, regarding the performance criteria such as the delay and network cost of the generated routing trees, load balancing, and the number of wavelengths required in the system. We prove that SPT and MST methods can not only produce routing trees with low network costs and short delays, but also have good competitive ratios for the load balancing problem (LBP) and wavelength assignment problem (WAP), respectively     

A protocol for scalable loop-free multicast routing

In network multimedia applications such as multiparty teleconferencing, users often need to send the same information to several (but not necessarily all) other users. To manage such one-to-many or many-to-many communication efficiently in wide-area internetworks, it is imperative to support and perform multicast routing. Multicast routing sends a single copy of a message from a source to multiple receivers over a communication link that is shared by the paths to the receivers. Loop-freedom is an especially important consideration in multicasting because applications using multicasting tend to be multimedia and bandwidth intensive, and loops in multicast routing duplicate looping packets. We present and verify a new multicast routing protocol, called multicast Internet protocol (MIP), which offers a simple and flexible approach to constructing both group-shared and shortest-paths multicast trees. MIP can be sender-initiated or receiver-initiated or both; therefore, it can be tailored to the particular nature of an application's group dynamics and size. MIP is independent of the underlying unicast routing algorithms used. MIP is robust and adapts under dynamic network conditions (topology or link cost changes) to maintain loop-free multicast routing. Under stable network conditions, MIP has no maintenance or control message overhead. We prove that MIP is loop-free at every instant, and that it is deadlock-free and obtains multicast routing trees within a finite time after the occurrence of an arbitrary sequence of topology or unicast changes     

Distributed center-location algorithms

Recent multicast routing protocol proposals such as protocol independent multicast (PIM) and core-based trees (CBT) have been based on the notion of group-shared trees. Since construction of a minimal-cost tree spanning for all members of a group is difficult, they rely on center-based trees and distribute packets from all sources over a single shortest-path tree rooted at some center. PIM and CBT provisionally use administrative selection or simple heuristics for locating the center of a group but do not preclude the use of other methods that provide an ordered list of centers. Other previously proposed heuristics typically require knowledge of the complete network topology, a requirement which is not always practical for a distributed problem such as Internet routing. We investigate the problem of finding a good center in a distributed fashion, study various heuristics for automating center selection, and examine their applicability to real-world networks. We also propose several new algorithms which we feel to be more practical than existing methods. We present simulation results on hierarchical and nonhierarchical networks showing that of the methods potentially feasible in the Internet multicast backbone, ours offer the best results in terms of cost and delay, and they incur low overhead     

Multicast Routing in Wireless Mesh Networks: Minimum Cost Trees or Shortest Path Trees?

There exist two fundamental approaches to multicast routing: shortest path trees (SPTs) and minimum cost trees (MCTs). The SPT algorithms minimize the distance (or cost) from the sender to each receiver, whereas the MCT algorithms minimize the overall cost of the multicast tree. Due to the very large scale and unknown topology of the Internet, computing MCTs for multicast routing in the Internet is a very complex problem. As a result, the SPT approach is the more commonly used method for multicast routing in the Internet, because it is easy to implement and gives minimum delay from the sender to each receiver, a property favored by many real-life applications. Unlike the Internet, a wireless mesh network (WMN) has a much smaller size, and its topology can be made known to all nodes in the network. This makes the MCT approach an equally viable candidate for multicast routing in WMNs. However, it is not clear how the two types of trees compare when used in WMNs. In this article we present a simulation-based performance comparison of SPTs and MCTs in WMNs, using performance metrics, such as packet delivery ratio, end-to-end delay, and traffic impacts on unicast flows in the same network.     

Algorithms for delay constrained group multicast routing

Multicast routing allows network sources to use network resources efficiently by sending only a single copy of data to all group members. In the delay constrained group multicast routing problem (DCGMRP), every group member is also a source, and has an individual minimal delay and bandwidth requirement. The routing algorithm must, for each member of the group, construct a source‐based routing tree spanning all the other member nodes without exceeding the capacities of the traversed links, while satisfying the stated delay constraints. Previous work adopted the direct, intuitive approach by first creating a source‐based multicast tree independently for each member node, and then iteratively locating network links whose capacity constraint are violated and eliminating the violation by rerouting the trees. In this paper, we investigate a number of efficient and effective algorithms, DCGM _ IA ⁺, DCGM _ GR and DCGM _ CP , for solving DCGMRP and compare their performance with previous proposals. Through extensive experiments, our proposals are shown to outperform previous algorithms in constructing group multicast trees with low costs and high success ratios. Copyright © 2005 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

A QoS-aware multicast routing protocol

The future Internet is expected to support multicast applications with quality of service (QoS) requirements. To facilitate this, QoS multicast routing protocols are pivotal in enabling new receivers to join a multicast group. However, current routing protocols are either too restrictive in their search for a feasible path between a new receiver and the multicast tree, or burden the network with excessive overhead. We propose QMRP, a new QoS-aware multicast routing protocol. QMRP achieves scalability by significantly reducing the communication overhead of constructing a multicast tree, yet it retains a high chance of success. This is achieved by switching between single-path routing and multiple-path routing according to the current network conditions. The high level design of QMRP makes it operable on top of any unicast routing algorithm in both intradomain and interdomain. Its responsiveness is improved by using a termination mechanism which detects the failure as well as the success of routing without the use of timeout. In addition, QMRP always constructs loop-free multicast trees     

Improved Shuffled Frog-Leaping Algorithm Based QoS Constrained Multicast Routing for Vanets

Prompt and reliable communication between vehicular nodes are essential as its limited coverage and dynamic mobility rate introduces frequent change of network topology. The key feature of vehicular communication that establishes direct connectivity or Road Side Unit-based data transfer among vehicular nodes is responsible for sharing emergency information during critical situations. Multicast routing data dissemination among vehicular nodes is considered to be the potential method of parallel data transfer as they facilitate the option of determining an optimal multicast tree from feasible number of multicast trees established between the source and destinations. This estimation of optimal multicast tree using meta-heuristic techniques is confirmed to improve the throughput and reliability of the network when QoS-based constraints are imposed during multicast routing. An Improved Shuffled Frog-Leaping Algorithm-Based QoS Constrained Multicast Routing (ISFLABMR) is proposed for estimating an optimal multicast tree that confirms effective multi-constrained applied multicast routing between vehicular nodes. ISFLABMR minimizes the cost of transmission to 22% by reducing the number of multicast clusters formed during multicasting through the utilization of local and global-based optimizations. The simulation results of ISFLABMR proveits predominant reduction rate of 24% and 21% in average packet latency and energy consumptions incurred under multicast routing.     

A scalable multicast routing protocol for building shortest path trees

Scalability is a great concern in the design of multicast routing protocols for the global Internet. Building shortest path trees (SPT) is currently one of the most widely used approaches to supporting multicast routing because of the simplicity and low per‐destination cost of such trees. However, the construction of an SPT typically involves high protocol overhead, which leads to the scalability problem as the number of concurrent multicast sessions increases. In this paper, we present a destination‐initiated shortest path tree (DSPT) routing protocol. The design objective is to effectively reduce the protocol overhead associated with SPT constructions for providing scalable multicast. To achieve this objective, we introduce destination‐initiated joining operations in constructing SPTs. With DSPT, each router receiving a request to join a specific multicast group makes a local decision on selecting its parent node through which it connects to the existing tree. A source‐rooted SPT is built as a result of such collaborative operations at nodes. DSPT requires only limited routing information at routers. Analytical results demonstrate that DSPT scales well with respect to computation, storage and communication overhead when the number of concurrent multicast requests is large. Simulation experiments are also conducted to verify the correctness of the theoretically deduced analytical results. Copyright © 2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Performance and resource cost comparisons for the CBT and PIMmulticast routing protocols

Researchers have proposed the core-based trees (CBTs) and protocol independent multicasting (PIM) protocols to route multicast data an internetworks. We compare the simulated performance of CBT and PIM using the OPNET network simulation tool. Performance metrics include end-to-end delay, network resource usage, join time, the size of the tables containing multicast routing information, and the impact of the timers introduced by the protocols. We also offer suggestions to improve PIM sparse mode while retaining the ability to offer both shared tree and source-based tree routing     

Dynamic Multicast Session Provisioning in WDM Optical Networks with Sparse Splitting Capability

In this work, we study dynamic provisioning of multicast sessions in a wavelength-routed sparse splitting capable WDM network with an arbitrary mesh topology where the network consists of nodes with full, partial, or no wavelength conversion capabilities and a node can be a tap-and-continue (TaC) node or a splitting and delivery (SaD) node. The objectives are to minimize the network resources in terms of wavelength-links used by each session and to reduce the multicast session blocking probability. The problem is to route the multicast session from each source to the members of every multicast session, and to assign an appropriate wavelength to each link used by the session. We propose an efficient online algorithm for dynamic multicast session provisioning. To evaluate the proposed algorithm, we apply the integer linear programming (ILP) optimization tool on a per multicast session basis to solve off-line the optimal routing and wavelength assignment given a multicast session and the current network topology as well as its residual network resource information. We formulate the per session multicast routing and wavelength assignment problem as an ILP. With this ILP formulation, the multicast session blocking probability or success probability can then be estimated based on solving a series of ILPs off-line. We have evaluated the effectiveness of the proposed online algorithm via simulation in terms of session blocking probability and network resources used by a session. Simulation results indicate that our proposed computationally efficient online algorithm performs well even when a fraction of the nodes are SaD nodes.