QoS-Aware Hierarchical Multicast Routing on Next Generation Internetworks

Quality of service (QoS) based routing and scalability are two key features of multicast routing for the next generation Internetworks. This paper proposes a new protocol called QoS-aware hierarchical multicast routing protocol (QHMRP) that achieves scalability by organizing the network as a hierarchy of domains using the full-mesh aggregation technique. The protocol uses a novel reverse flooding approach with hierarchical, topological and QoS forwarding conditions to construct the multicast tree while minimizing message overhead and satisfying QoS requirements. The distributed algorithm used in the protocol constructs loop-free tree. Simulations are performed to evaluate the performance of QHMRP under different situations and compare it with a flat routing algorithm.