Dynamic group multicast routing with bandwidth reservations

Multicasting refers to the transmission of data from a source node to multiple destination nodes in a network. Group multicasting is a generalization of inulticasting whereby every member of a group is allowed to multicast messages to other members that belong to the same group. The routing problem in this case involves the construction of a set of low cost multicast trees with bandwidth requirements, one for each member of the group for multicasting messages to other members of the group. In this paper, we examine this routing problem with an additional requirement that member nodes are allowed to join and leave the multicasting group anytime during a session. We call this problem, the dynamic group multicast routing problem (DGMRP). In this paper, we proposed three heuristic algorithms to generate a set of low cost multicast trees with dynamic group membership. Results from our empirical study shows that the one of the proposed algorithms, called Maximum bandwidth bottleneck path selection algorithm (MBBPS). achieves better utilization of bandwidth resources as compared with the other two algorithms which are based on a greedy approach. In addition MBBPS performs better in terms of cost when the bandwidth is not sufficient in the network. Copyright (C) 2002 John Wiley Sons, Ltd.