A new conference network for group communication

A conference refers to a group of members in a network which communicate with each other within the group. In this paper, we propose a novel design for a conference network which supports multiple disjoint conferences. The major component of the network is a multistage network composed of switch modules with fan-in and fan-out capability. A fast self-routing algorithm is developed for setting up routing paths in the conference network. For an n/spl times/n conference network we design, the hardware cost is O(n log n), and the routing time and communication delay vary from O(1) to O(log n) depending on where the conference is allocated in the network. As can be seen, the new conference network is superior to existing designs in terms of hardware cost, routing time and communication delay. The conference network proposed is rearrangeable nonblocking in general, and is strictly nonblocking under some conference service policy. It can be used in applications that require efficient or real-time group communication.