Multicast Support Research Articles

Dual partitioning multicasting for high-performance on-chip networks

As the number of cores integrated onto a single chip increases, power dissipation and network latency become ever-increasingly stringent. On-chip network provides an efficient and scalable interconnection paradigm for chip multiprocessors (CMPs), wherein one-to-many (multicast) communication is universal for such platforms. Without efficient multicasting support, traditional unicasting on-chip networks will be low efficiency in tackling such multicast communication. In this paper, we propose Dual Partitioning Multicasting (DPM) to reduce packet latency and balance network resource utilization. Specifically, DPM scheme adaptively makes routing decisions based on the network load-balance level as well as the link sharing patterns characterized by the distribution of the multicasting destinations. Extensive experimental results for synthetic traffic as well as real applications show that compared with the recently proposed RPM scheme, DPM significantly reduces the average packet latency and mitigates the network power consumption. More importantly, DPM is highly scalable for future on-chip networks with heavy traffic load and varieties of traffic patterns.

Conception of ID layer performance at the network level for Internet of Things

This paper proposes a novel architecture of the ID (IDentifier) layer for Internet of Things, which is embedded in the network level instead of traditional overlay solutions. Our contribution characterizes development of human-readable, hierarchical ID-based unified addressing for both objects and services, corresponding to their locations. In this way, users gain easier access to the IoT resources and native support for multicast. Furthermore, we take advantage of the Networking Named Content approach to specify rules for ID-based data transfer. The network nodes have capabilities to cache forwarded data for handling future requests, what may decrease network overload and facilitate cooperation between applications and sensors which periodically move into sleep mode for saving energy. ID-based routing offers decoupling of identification of objects/services from their location. Awareness of forwarded IoT data together with hierarchical distribution of the network makes feasible the local management of users and objects, that is, the essential IoT processes such as object/service registration, publication, searching and resolution can be managed locally in the network node. This offers high flexibility and manageability and improves response of the system when the number of handled things scales. The paper presents the architecture of the proposed solution for ID layer focusing on modules and mechanisms of the ID network node, as well as detailed description of registration, resolution and forwarding processes. Furthermore, the implementation of the system, performed on Linux-based routers, was tested to confirm the correctness of ID layer processes. The tests show that the performance of ID network node is not worse than the performance of a classical IP Linux router running on an identical physical device.

Architectural framework for mobile multicast support in wireless mesh networks

A wireless mesh network (WMN) is an infrastructure multihop ad hoc network with broadband capabilities. Multicasting is an efficient mechanism for delivery of group communication. However, the current IEEE 802.11s standard has no provision for efficient group communication delivery. Furthermore, the disruption in internet connectivity and loss of information when a mobile mesh client changes its point of attachment may lead to disruption in an ongoing session. The internet gateway (IGW), a prominent component, serves as the wired bridge between the mesh nodes and the internet, thus its placement determines the overall quality of communication in WMNs. Accordingly, a structural design for supporting multicast services in this architecture is indispensable. The main question this paper addresses is how multicast can be efficiently supported for mobile mesh clients in WMN architecture. This paper adopts the technique of employing multicast architecture to solve mobility problems for mobile mesh clients. Thus a framework of novel architecture for supporting multicast services for group application delivery over WMN is presented. The proposed architecture features enhanced functionality of IGW, shared multicast tree, optimal design for IGW and core placement, hierarchical mobility management, load balancing, and robustness. The overall objective is the provision of cost efficient WMN architecture while mobile multicast traffic delivery is supported optimally. This is the first effort reporting multicast service support framework for mobile mesh clients with a focus on IGW placement and functionality.

LIGERO

Although abstraction is the best approach to deal with computing system complexity, sometimes implementation details should be considered. Considering on-chip interconnection networks in particular, underestimating the underlying system specificity could have nonnegligible impact on performance, cost, or correctness. This article presents a very efficient router that has been devised to deal with cache-coherent chip multiprocessor particularities in a balanced way. Employing the same principles of packet rotation structures as in the rotary router, we present a router configuration with the following novel features: (1) reduced buffering requirements, (2) optimized pipeline under contentionless conditions, (3) more efficient deadlock avoidance mechanism, and (4) optimized in-order delivery guarantee. Putting it all together, our proposal provides a set of features that no other router, to the best of our knowledge, has achieved previously. These are: (1') low implementation cost, (2') low pass-through latency under low load, (3') improved resource utilization through adaptive routing and a buffering scheme free of head-of-line blocking, (4') guarantee of coherence protocol correctness via end-to-end deadlock avoidance and in-order delivery, and (5') improvement of coherence protocol responsiveness through adaptive in-network multicast support. We conduct a thorough evaluation that includes hardware cost estimation and performance evaluation under a wide spectrum of realistic workloads and coherence protocols. Comparing our proposal with VCTM, an optimized state-of-the-art wormhole router, it requires 50% less area, reduces on-chip cache hierarchy energy delay product on average by 20%, and improves the cache-coherency chip multiprocessor performance under realistic working conditions by up to 20%.

Multicast Support in Input Queued Switches with Low Matching Overhead

This letter addresses the scalability problems induced by high complexity of multicast scheduling algorithms in high-speed switches. Based on a two-phase (request-grant) scheduling scheme in a Nx N switch, a more scalable approach instead of traditional iterative schedulings is presented, which reduces the matching overhead from O(kN) to O(N) by selecting one head-of-line cell for requesting when k multicast queues are allocated at each input port. Simulation results show that the proposed algorithm exhibits a good switching performance in terms of throughput and average delay under various traffic patterns.

A Novel Association Control Strategy for Supporting Multiple Multicast Sessions in WLANs

Multicast is an important service relied upon by many applications in Wireless Local Area Networks (WLANs), which unfortunately is limited by the subscribing station with the lowest data rate. A key approach to address this problem is to employ an association control strategy to ensure stations are organized in a manner that optimizes a given objective. To this end, this paper studies the NP-hard, Multiple Multicast Sessions (MMS) problem. It proposes a novel greedy algorithm that aims to minimize the average APs load. Simulation results show that our algorithm reduces the average APs load by up to 70.4% as compared to prior approaches.

Multicast Gain for IPTV Transmission in WiMAX Multi-hop Relay Networks

Due to characteristics such as: multicast support, wide coverage range, high bandwidth and mobility support, WiMAX could be a leading solution to deliver bandwidth-hungry IPTV services to mobile users. Mobile multi-hop relay (MMR) was proposed as an amendment of the current mobile WiMAX standard to provide relaying capabilities. Relays are deployed as a cost-effective solution to extent coverage area and increase throughput without deploying expensive base stations. In this paper, we introduce multicast gain as a performance criterion, which can be used for computing multicast efficiency. In order to quantify the benefits of multicasting, we analyze multicast transmission for delivery of live TV channels in MMR networks, and determine the gain of access and relay links. The quantification of the efficiency of multicasting can be used by IPTV service providers in resource provisioning, access control or decision support mechanisms in delivery of different TV channels.

Adaptive-Tree Multicast: Efficient Multidestination Support for CMP Communication Substrate

Multidestination communications are a highly necessary capability for many coherence protocols in order to minimize on-chip hit latency. Although CMPs share this necessity, up to now few suitable proposals have been developed. The combination of resource scarcity and the common idea that multicast support requires a substantial amount of extra resources is responsible for this situation. In this work, we propose a new approach suitable for on-chip networks capable of managing multidestination traffic via hardware in an efficient way with negligible complexity. We introduce a novel multicast routing mechanism, able to circumvent many of the limitations of conventional multicast schemes. Adaptive-tree multicasting is able to maintain correctness for multiflit multicast messages without routing restrictions, while also coupling correctness and performance in a natural way. Replication restrictions not only guarantee the presence of enough resources to avoid deadlock, but also dynamically adapt tree shape to network conditions, routing multicast messages through noncongested paths. The performance results, using a state-of-the-art full system simulation framework, show that it improves the average full system performance of a CMP by 20 percent and network ED2P by 15 percent, when compared to a state-of-the-art router with conventional multicast support and similar implementation cost.

Using Orthogonal Channels for Supporting Multicast Service in Multi-channel Wireless Mesh Networks

Unlike wired networks, the capacity of a wireless network is interference limited due to the broadcast nature of wireless medium. Some multicast wireless network protocols do not consider channel assignment issue, that they cause interference at transmission nodes, hence do not use full capacity of the network. Interference can be reduced and throughput improved with the use of multichannel features. Therefore, this paper used orthogonal channels for sending and receiving nodes in the network. We propose EWM (Efficient Wireless Multicast) method that is distributed scheme for constructing multicast tree in multi-channel multi-interface wireless mesh networks (MIMC-WMN) which selects relay nodes and in distributed form assign orthogonal radio channels to them. To more decrease of interference in adding a branch to the tree, the route with minimum end-to-end delay from the source to the multicast receiver will be chosen. Thus, the tree is suitable for multimedia applicants. We also employ the broadcast nature of the wireless media to reduce the number of relay nodes. The proposed algorithm is compared with MCM algorithm in NS2.

A signaling architecture for multimedia MBS over WiMAX

In this article, we design and demonstrate a signaling architecture for multicast and broadcast services over a laboratory-emulated worldwide interoperability for microwave access (WiMAX) network. WiMAX is a broadband wireless access technology which includes different quality of service levels. Currently, a significant research effort focuses on data transmission optimization and mobility support for multicast and broadcast services. Our proposal is fully IP-based, and the relevant signaling architecture is modular in all its entities and extensible to other, non-WiMAX, IP access networks. We specifically address the non-trivial support of multicast services, which has been demonstrated through a prototype implementation of our proposal for an Internet protocol television (IPTV) service. This prototype has been implemented by using open source technologies and its signaling is orchestrated by a JAIN SLEE server. The results obtained show that the implemented system is scalable, can achieve both high signaling throughput and low service latency, and has a signaling overhead lower than similar IMS-based solutions.

A Survey of Multicasting in Optical Burst Switched Networks: Future Research Directions

A promising solution to increasing busty traffic over the Internet can be Optical Burst Switched (OBS) networks with scalable and efficient multicast support. The efficiency of multicasting in OBS networks depends on: the burstification process, the multicasting schemes, tree sharing strategies, construction of shared trees, multicast schemes for dynamic sessions and membership. In this article, the contributions of various researchers are studied thoroughly and compared to survey the various approaches and problems of multicasting in OBS networks and outline several future research directions in terms of applications in business, especially in Business-toBusiness (B2B) and Business-to-Consumer (B2C) Models, through optimal resource utilization of QoS aware multicasting in OBS networks.

TPSS: A Flexible Hardware Support for Unicast and Multicast on Network-on-Chip

Multicast is an important traffic mode that runs on multi-core systems, and an efficient hardware support for multicast can greatly improve the performance of the whole system. Most multicast solutions use the dimension-order routing to generate the mutlicast trees, which are neither bandwidth nor power efficient. This article presents a synthesizable router for network-on-chip (NoC) which supports arbitrarily shaped multicast path based on a mesh topology. In our scheme, incremental setup is adopted to simplify the process of multicast tree construction. For each sub-path setup, we present a novel scheme called two period sub-path setup (TPSS). TPSS is divided into two periods: routing to a predeterminate intermediate router, and updating lookup tables from the intermediate router to destination. This novel setup makes it feasible to support arbitrarily shaped path setup. In our case study, Optimized tree algorithm (OPT) and Left-XY-Right-Optimized tree algorithm (LXYROPT) are proposed for power-efficient path searching, but they need to be pre-configured for the reason of high computation cost. Moreover, Virtual Circuit Tree Multicasting (VCTM) is also supported in our scheme for dynamic construction of multicast path, which needs no computation in path searching. The performance is evaluated by using a cycle accurate simulator developed in SystemC, and the hardware overhead is estimated by using a synthesizable HDL model. Compared to VCTM (without FIFO, multicast table and network adapter), the area overhead of implementing our router is negligible (less than 0.5%).

An Efficient Alarm Notification Algorithm for Earthquake Early Warning System

Alarm Notification is a service that addresses devices and users with messages to be processed immediately or at a specific time. In this paper, we propose an efficient alarm notification algorithm for earthquake early warning system in Taiwan. Due to the lack of multicast support in the general IP network, we try to deliver notification messages to multiple receivers in time base on location information、network throughput with peering ISPs and priority with IoT devices. With the proposed algorithm, we can not only reduce the burst message traffic for network but also send the messages in time.

Research on P2P-VoD System Based on IPv6 Network

In this paper, for the shortage of network quality of service, multicast support and other deficiencies in VoD systems based on IPv4 network, we built a P2P VoD system architecture based on IPv6 network and data transfer mechanisms were in-depth studied. This paper describes the basic idea of the system and system architecture. According to the characteristics of P2P and multicast, we designed a collaboration data transmission of P2P and IP multicast and did some experiments and analysis on the system. Experimental results show that the system can effectively solve the P2P bandwidth problem and the unreliable of multicast data, and has high efficiency and practical value.

Performance analysis of multicast routing and wavelength assignment protocol with dynamic traffic grooming in WDM networks

The need for on-demand provisioning of wavelength-routed channels with service-differentiated offerings within the transport layer has become more essential because of the recent emergence of high bit rate Internet protocol IP network applications. Diverse optical transport network architectures have been proposed to achieve the above requirements. This approach is determined by fundamental advances in wavelength division multiplexing WDM technologies. Because of the availability of ultra long-reach transport and all-optical switching, the deployment of all-optical networks has been made possible. The concurrent transmission of multiple streams of data with the assistance of special properties of fiber optics is called WDM. The WDM network provides the capability of transferring huge amounts of data at high speeds by the users over large distances. There are several network applications that require the support of QoS multicast, such as multimedia conferencing systems, video-on-demand systems, real-time control systems, etc. In a WDM network, the route decision and wavelength assignment of lightpath connections are based mainly on the routing and wavelength assignment RWA. The multicast RWA's task is to maximize the number of multicast groups admitted or minimize the call-blocking probability. The dynamic traffic-grooming problem in wavelength-routed networks is generally a two-layered routing problem in which traffic connections are routed over lightpaths in the virtual topology layer and lightpaths are routed over physical links in the physical topology layer. In this paper, a multicast RWA protocol for capacity improvement in WDM networks is designed. In the wavelength assignment technique, paths from the source node to each of the destination nodes and the potential paths are divided into fragments by the junction nodes and these junction nodes have the wavelength conversion capability. By using the concept of fragmentation and grouping, the proposed scheme can be generally applied for the wavelength assignment of multicast in WDM networks. An optimized dynamic traffic grooming algorithm is also developed to address the traffic grooming problem in mesh networks in the multicast scenario for maximizing the resource utilization and minimizing the blocking probability. Copyright © 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Collaborative Content Fetching Using MAC Layer Multicast in Wireless Mobile Networks

It is common that current mobile devices are equipped with multiple interfaces such as GPRS or UMTS for wireless WAN (WWAN) links as well as WiFi and/or bluetooth for local networking. Meanwhile, it is also possible that a number of mobile subscribers keep close for a period of time and fetch same content from Internet. Stimulated by these facts, we develop C5, a collaborative content fetching scheme for groups of mobile subscribers with common characteristics. C5 makes a number of new contributions over prior work: (a) a small scale P2SP framework of a hybrid mobile network which considers possible concurrent mobile Internet traffic to maximize the utility of WWAN links; (b) support of MAC layer multicast in community and a new community formation procedure with the multicast rate estimation; (c) an application-level fetching procedure for both server and peer clients. We also formulate the content fetching process in C5 into an optimization problem and give a simple method to estimate the bound of the objective function. Simulation results show that C5 can speed up the equivalent fetching rate for community members. Thus it can improve user experiences for mobile Internet subscribers.

Improving physical layer multicast by cooperative communications in heterogeneous networks

Recently, heterogeneous networks (HetNets) have drawn significant attention from academia and industry as an efficient way to improve the capacity and coverage of cellular systems. In addition to unicast communication, many important applications in HetNets, such as video/audio conferencing and mobile TV, require the support of multicast. In this article, we study the deployment of HetNets from the perspective of cooperative communications to improve the performance of physical layer multicast. Specifically, we coordinate the eNBs of different levels by fountain codes for the data transmission of a multicast session. The fountain codes in cooperative multicast are targeted to the physical layer and have to adopt short code length. Correspondingly, we propose a Reed-Solomon-based approach, which is different from the previous work on application layer forward error correction. Simulation results show that our proposed cooperative scheme can considerably increase the capacity of physical layer multicast in heterogeneous networks.

Ring Mesh Based Multicast Routing Scheme in MANET Using Bandwidth Delay Product

Quality of Service (QoS) support in Mobile Ad Hoc Networks (MANETs) for group communication necessitates design of reliable networks with multicast support mechanisms. Reliable network connectivity among MANET nodes require high quality links that have much less packet drops and reliable nodes considering node mobility and failures. Reliability of a network can be enhanced by designing an end-to-end network pipe that satisfies the required QoS in terms of in-flight packets from source to a destination as well as by using a path comprising of reliable nodes. In-flight packets may be computed by using bandwidth delay product (BDP) of a network pipe. To meet the QoS requirements of an application, BDP should be maintained stable irrespective of vibrant network conditions. In this paper, we propose a BDP based multicast routing scheme in MANET using reliable ring mesh backbone. The scheme operates in the following sequence. (1) Reliable node pairs are computed based on mobility, remaining battery power and differential signal strength. The node pairs also compute BDP between them. BDP of a reliability pair is assessed using available bandwidth and delay experienced by a packet between them. (2) Backbone ring mesh is constructed using reliable pair nodes and convex hull algorithm. Reliable ring mesh is constructed at an arbitrary distance from the centroid of the MANET area. (3) Multicast paths are found by discovering a path from source to each destination of the group with concatenated set of reliability pairs that satisfy the BDP requirement. (4) The ring mesh maintains high BDP on ring links and can recover in case of node mobility and failures. Results show that there is an improvement in terms of end-to-end delay, packet delivery ratio, control overhead, memory overhead and application rejection ratio as compared to the Enhanced On Demand Multicast Routing Protocol.

LNT: a Logical Neighbor Tree for Secure Group Management in Wireless Sensor Networks

Secure group management is an important issue in Wireless Sensor Networks (WSNs). The most of previous works consider the whole network as a single group managed by a central, powerful node (e.g., the base station) capable of supporting heavy communication, computation and storage cost. However, typical WSNs applications may benefit from being designed and implemented as a collection of multiple logical groups, each one is maintained by a sensor node (the group controller) with constrained resources. Furthermore, previous schemes require multicast support at the routing level to deliver rekeying messages. Unfortunately, multicast may cause a storage and communication overhead that are not a_ordable in a WSN. In order to go beyond these two limitations, we propose a new secure group management scheme with a lightweight re-keying process. The scheme allows multiple logical groups, each one is maintained and rekeyed separately by a resource-constrained sensor node without requiring multicast routing support. We prove that the scheme is secure and we evaluate its performance from several view points. Actually, we show that our scheme outperforms some previous well-known schemes such as LKH.

Mobility of sources and listeners: real-time support of multicast services

In today's Internet there is an increasing demand for group-based multimedia sessions, such as video/audio conferencing, IPTV, push media. Moreover, there is an increasing trend for mobile communications, with large network dynamic events, which require fast resilience to keep, as much as possible, sessions alive over time. In this sense, the bandwidth-constrained data transport scheme of IP multicast allows traffic optimization throughout the network. However, current IP multicast support over mobile communications is not efficient, mainly due to the IP addressing scheme and mobility. If multicast sources mobility is taken into account, then the performance of IP multicast is significantly degraded, due to the requirement for constantly changing the overall multicast tree. In this paper we propose a new solution for agent-based multicast in both sources and listeners mobile environments, called MUlticast TEleport (MUTE). MUTE considers the existence of anchor points in the network that provide proxy features, assuming the view of multicast data source inside the network, and establishing independence between listeners and sources movements. Moreover, we propose MUTE extension to efficiently support time-sensitive sessions, which consists in integrating IEEE 802.21 and QoS-aware abstracted transport approach, to allow media independent transport with fast resilience support. The evaluation of MUTE was carried out in NS-2, and the results show that it is able to provide both multicast sources and listeners mobility with decreased disruption time and increased network performance in heterogeneous systems.