Comparative Analisys of Multicast Routing Algorithms for Multimedia Communication over ATM Networks

For a long time, the quality of the distributed multimedia applications was restricted by the limitations of the computer networking technologies. This scenery has changed a lot with the introduction of ATM (Asynchronous Transfer Mode). Characteristics like quality of service (QoS), support to different categories of traffic (voice, video and data), high scalability, among others, make ATM one of the most appropriate technologies for multiservice networks. Another important characteristic is the support to multicast transmissions. In ATM, the use of multicast communication, as well as the resources’ reservations are specified during the connection establishment phase. In this phase, connection establishment requests are routed among the switches in order to assure the necessary resources for the provision of the required communication services. In this case, the routing task involves aspects like quality of service (QoS), multicast communication, and resources reservation, becoming a complex task with specific characteristics. This paper will analyze in details the multicast routing with QoS restriction, presenting a comparative study about the solutions that has been proposed to deal with this new problem. This study will cover theoretical analyses and simulations of four heuristics: KPP, CSPT, CCET and Hybrid. Parameters related to the order of complexity, cost of the multicast tree, delay, number of switches, execution time and maximum number of simultaneous multicast sessions will be evaluated, analyzed and compared.