Efficient algorithm for group multicast routing with bandwidth reservation

Multicasting refers to the transmission of data from a source node to multiple destination nodes in a network. Group multicasting is a generalization of multicasting whereby every member of a group is allowed to multicast messages to other members that belong to the same group. The routing problem in this case involves the construction of a set of low cost multicast trees with bandwidth requirements, one for each member of the group, for multicasting messages to other members of the group. In this paper, we propose a new heuristic algorithm to generate a set of low cost multicast trees with bandwidth requirements. Simulation results show that our proposed algorithm performed better in terms of cost and in terms of utilization of bandwidth as compared to an existing algorithm that was proposed by Jia and Wang.