Network Planning for Multicast Using Partitioned Virtual User Domains

Abstract

We introduce a new network planning approach for management of multicast communications in large data dissemination networks. Our approach, addressing Channelization Problem, considers both the common user interests and geographical dependencies while evaluating multicast configurations. We first perform Global Similarity Classification to partition users into virtual domains based on their characteristics within the same geographical vicinity. Second, based on the resource availability of a given network, Localized Multicast Update mechanism is used to evaluate the benefits of forming a new multicast group and the cost of the management overhead. We evaluate the performance of the proposed approach using our simulation software. Preliminary results show that, using two-stage planning, the performance of our approach is at least 40% better than the existing greedy approaches.

Keywords

This work has been prepared through collaborative participation in the Communications Networks Consortium sponsored by the U.S. Army Research Lab under the Collaborative Technology Alliance Program, Cooperative Agreement DAAD19-01-2-0011. The U.S. Government is authorized to reproduce and distribute reprints for Government purposes notwithstanding any copyright notation thereon. Copyright © 2007 The City University of New York and Telcordia Technologies, Inc. All rights reserved.