A Low-Cost Algorithm for Multicast Routing

                             Pingyan Tan 
                       Frederick C. Harris, Jr.

                    Department of Computer Science
                        University of Nevada
                         Reno, Nevada 89557
                          fredh@cs.unr.edu

This paper presents a low-cost algorithm for multicast routing in computer
networks. For performance evaluation, it is compared with Link-State
multicast routing, which is a low-delay algorithm used by the Internet
MOSPF protocol.  This new algorithm supports the group concept and
the unknown-destination delivery.  It uses a minimum average distance
method to select the forwarding links to achieve the low-cost goal.
Another important feature of this algorithm is that no delivery tree
has to be maintained, which eliminates the problem of memory and CPU
congestion. Moreover, its computation time complexity is only linear
in the group size. Simulation study shows that this algorithm can lower
delay by as much as 40 percent for the same offered load, compared with
the low-delay algorithm.
keywords: network, routing, low-cost