A distributed QoS-Aware multicast routing protocol

This paper discusses the multicast routing problem with QoS constraints, and describes a network model that is suitable to research such routing problem. The paper mainly presents a distributed QoS-aware multicast routing protocol (QMRP). The QMRP can operate on top of the unicast routing protocol. It only requires the local state information of the link (or the node), but does not require any global network state to be maintained. The QMRP can significantly reduce the overhead for constructing a multicast tree with QoS constraints. In QMRP, a multicast group member can join or leave the multicast session dynamically, which can support dynamic membership. The protocol can search multiple feasible tree branches, and select the optimal or near-optimal branch for connecting the new receiver to the multicast tree if it exists. In this paper, the proof of correctness and complexity analysis of the QMRP are given, and the performance measures of the protocol are evaluated using simulation. The study shows that QMRP provides an available approach to multicast routing with QoS constraints and dynamic membership support.Received: 3 April 2003, Published online: 2 September 2003