An efficient fault-tolerant multicast routing protocol with core-based tree techniques

Abstract

In this paper, we design and analyze an efficient fault-tolerant multicast routing protocol. Reliable multicast communication is critical for the success of many Internet applications. Multicast routing protocols with core-based tree techniques (CBT) have been widely used because of their scalability and simplicity. We enhance the CBT protocol with fault tolerance capability and improve its efficiency and effectiveness. With our strategy, when a faulty component is detected, some pre-defined backup path(s) is (are) used to bypass the faulty component and enable the multicast communication to continue. Our protocol only requires that routers near the faulty component be reconfigured, thus reducing the runtime overhead without compromising much of the performance. Our approach is in contrast to other approaches that often require relatively large tree reformation when faults occur. These global methods are usually costly and complicated in their attempt to achieve theoretically optimal performance. Our performance evaluation shows that our new protocol performs nearly as well as the best possible global method while utilizing much less runtime overhead and implementation cost.