Efficient multicast source routing scheme

Abstract

With multicast source routing, all routing information is put into the packet header by the source node. On receiving an incoming packet, a node uses an address processing algorithm to examine the packet header, and then forwards the packet to the next appropriate node. To reduce the transmission delay, the information in the packet header which is useless in the future path to the destination should be deleted by each visited node as much as possible. In this research note, we present an efficient multicast source routing scheme. The address processing algorithm in our multicast source routing scheme can delete any information in the packet header that has already been used in the past route, or which becomes useless in the remaining route. In addition, to enable the destinations to give the source a fast response, the reverse path information is also included in the packet header by the source node. However, a destination usually only needs a small part of the reverse path information to generate its own reverse path address. Our address processing algorithm can also delete the useless part of the reverse path information so that the transmission delay can be further reduced. Both theoretical analyses and computer simulations show that our multicast source routing scheme is more efficient than other existing multicast source routing schemes.