SIMULATION ANALYSIS OF ROUTING STRATEGIES IN MULTICASTING MULTISERVICE LOSS NETWORKS

This paper begins with an overview of multicast algorithms, which are the most promising candidates to be in wide use in first generation As ynchronous Transfer Mode (ATM) based Broadband Integrated Services Dig ital Networks (B-ISDN). Since the Multiple Destination Routing (MDR) p roblem and the associated Steiner Tree problem are known to be NP-comp lete and therefore a number of heuristic algorithms have been proposed in the literature, we first need to establish which of these are the best candidates for the B-ISDN. We conclude that the weighted greedy-t ype algorithms are promising ones, and therefore we examine the behavi or of these algorithms in terms of blocking probability and network ut ilization. In doing so, we use a B-ISDN call level simulation program, which proves to be an indispensable tool in the quest for efficient m ulticast algorithms. We find that shortest path routing with appropria te (adaptive) weight functions combined with the complete partitioning link allocation policy may give satisfactory blocking values and good network utilization in networks of different sizes.