Multiple constraints-based QoS multicast routing: model and algorithms

Providing quality of service (QoS) guarantees in packet networks gives rise to several challenging issues. In general, multi-constrained path selection with or without optimization, is a NP-complete problem that cannot be exactly solved in polynomial time. Hence, accurate constraints-based routing algorithms with a fast running time are scarce, perhaps even non-existent. The expected impact of such a constrained-based routing algorithm has resulted in the proposal of numerous heuristics and a few exact QoS algorithms. This paper aims to give a thorough, concise and fair evaluation of the most important multiple constraint-based QoS Multicast routing algorithms known today, and it provides a descriptive overview and simulation results of these multi-constrained routing algorithms.