No abstract

Routing connections in a point-to-point network is typically treated as a shortest path problem in a graph. Nodes represent switching systems, edges represent links and the edge lengths represent the costs associated with using a link. With multicast routing, one is interested in the shortest subtree of the network containing a given set of hosts. This is essentially a Steiner Tree problem in graphs and is known to be NP-complete [Karp]. Traditionally, the multicast routing algorithms proposed for packet switched networks like asynchronous transfer mode (ATM) networks have been aimed at minimising the total link cost of the Steiner tree [Waxman88], [Jaffe83] and do not take the geographical spreading of the connections into account. A dynamic point-to-multipoint routing algorithm is proposed, which takes into account the concept of geographic spread (also defined) of the connections and its performance is evaluated against the KMB near optimal heuristic algorithm for solving the Steiner tree problem [Kou].

No abstract