The performance of multicast banyan networks

Multicast is the ability to transmit information from a single source node to multiple selected destination nodes in a network. Current trends in networking applications indicate that there will be an increasing demand in future networks for multicast communication. Banyan networks have been proposed for use in ATM high-speed communications networks and have been used for the interconnection of processors in scalable parallel computers. This paper addresses the performance issues of supporting multicast communication in banyan networks. Previous work on the performance of banyan networks has been primarily for the networks which can support only one-to-one communication (i.e., unicast banyan networks). We present an analytical model for the performance of banyan networks which support multicast communication (i.e., multicast banyan networks). The performance of both unbuffered and buffered banyan multicast networks is analyzed. Our model yields a set of equations that can be solved for the throughput of the network. We show that the throughput of a multicast banyan network is generally higher than that of a unicast banyan network. In particular, we obtain that the throughput of an unbuffered multicast banyan network is Θ(N), where N is the size of the network, compared with Θ(N/log N) for an unbuffered unicast banyan network. In addition to the throughput, we also derive formulas for two other important performance metrics, average packet transfer time and packet loss probability, in the buffered multicast banyan networks