A Dynamic Distributed Algorithm for Multicast Path Setup

Abstract

In the past few years, there has been a considerable work on multicast route selection techniques, with the aim to design scalable protocols which can guarantee an efficient use of network resources. Steiner tree-based multicast algorithms produce optimal trees, but they are prohibitively expensive. For this reason, heuristic methods are generally employed. Conventional centralized Steiner heuristics provide effective solutions, but they are unpractical for large networks, since they require a complete knowledge of the network topology. In this paper, we propose a new distributed approach that is efficient and suitable for real network adoption. Performance evaluation indicates that it outperforms the state-of-the-art distributed algorithms for multicast tree setup, providing good levels of competitiveness, convergence time, and communication complexity. Furthermore, we propose a novel distributed technique for dynamically updating the multicast tree.