Resource allocation for multicast connections: Algorithms and performance analysis

Multicast applications such as electronic news delivery continue to grow with the Internet Such applications demand guarantees of the quality of service (QoS). Given a set of receivers and their QoS demands in a multicast session, these end-to-end QoS requirements must be divided among the participating links so that resources can be reserved. In this paper, the optimal solution to the multicast resource allocation problem is characterized by a partial first-derivative test (PFDT), and an iterative algorithm (EAR-OPT) is given to find the optimal allocation. The EAR-OPT algorithm can be implemented distributively which makes it suitable for receiver-oriented reservation. A simple heuristic algorithm (EAR-LL) is also studied. In addition we report two properties that can be identified at the optimal resource allocation, one each for unicast and multicast connections. Then the performance of three multicast resource allocation algorithms, namely EAR-OPT, EAR-LL and EAR-ALL [2], is analyzed. Simulation results using packetized voice sources are reponed comparing bandwidth, call blocking and new-receiver joining probability.