Abstract:

Due to the problem that IP multicast protocols tended to construct a single minimum spanning tree for a multicast source (i.e., group), which can not balance the resource allocation of multicast networks, an ant colony-based load balancing algorithm for multicast networks called the load distribution algorithm (LDA) was proposed. The proposed LDA mainly consisted of two parts: the Selecting Candidate Path and Multicast Scheduling. PIM-SSM (Protocol-Independent Multicast Single-Source Multicast) with the LDA can balance network traffic distribution and meanwhile maintain less packet loss and average delay in the case of co-existing multiple multicast sources. Simulation comparisons between PIM-SSM with the LDA and the original PIMSSM, showed that higher network utilization was achieved in PIM-SSM with the proposed LDA, while maintaining less average end to end delay where there were bottleneck effects.

Key words: multicast; ant colony algorithm; load distribution algorithm (LDA)