MODELING AND SIMULATIONS OF MULTICAST ROUTING ALGORITHMS FOR ADVANCEDNETWORK APPLICATIONS

Multicast has become an important service in modern network applicatio ns. Multicast routing is a difficult issue, particularly under delay o r bandwidth constraints. This paper discusses Steiner trees in the mod eling of multicast routings and various routing constraints required b y applications. It also discusses the existing multicast routing algor ithms, especially the routings under constraints, such as delay constr aint, limited available bandwidth, and traffic load balancing. Extensi ve simulations have been conducted to reveal the relationships between the network cost of the routing and each of the discussed constraints .