Analysis of multicast routing algorithms for broadband networks

We analyze a family of heuristics for multicast routing intended for directed networks which ranges from a simple “naive” algorithm to iterative algorithms where a partial tree is extended in each iteration. Apart from the comparison of the algorithms complexity and efficiency expressed in terms of multicasting tree cost, we study the length of the connection paths which can be critical from the quality of service viewpoint in broadband networks. It is shown that in general, for a given network example, the lower the tree cost the larger the average and maximum connection path lengths. In this context we propose two heuristics which provide a trade-off between features of the simple “naive” algorithm and the sophisticated algorithm proposed by Takahashi