Efficient Routing Algorithms for Multicast in IP and Carrier Ethernet Networks

In the last several years, major developments in network topologies and their services have been presented. However, the demand of more network bandwidth and other Quality of Services (QoS) parameters has never stopped. Furthermore, new services such as Internet Protocol Television (IPTV), Video on Demand (VoD), distance learning, etc. appeared, accelerating the network traffic growth. Some of these services need a high bandwidth when they are unicasted to each customer. In this case, multicast is a promising technology for such distribution of streaming traffic. It can reduce the required bandwidth by distributing multicast traffic over so-called multicast distribution trees. Multicasting provides transmitting the data from a source to a group of receivers. Unlike the unicast technology, a multicast source only sends one copy of data to a multicast address. The replication and distribution of data is then achieved by multicast routers along the distribution tree. Additionally, the multicast technology is not connection oriented. A multicast datagram is delivered to multiple receivers over User Data Protocol (UDP) with the same “best effort” reliability as a standard unicast datagram. The main difference between a multicast and a unicast packet is the destination address.