A branch-point scheme for multicast ABR service in ATM networks
Sang Hun Chun, Kyung Sup Kwak · IEICE Transactions on Communications · 2000
SUMMARY In this study, we propose a branch-point schemefor multicast ABR service in ATM networks.The performance ofthe proposed scheme is obtained to show that the consolidationnoise and delay can be reduced more effectively than those of theexisting schemes. key words: multicastABRservice,branch-pointconsolidation 1. IntroductionThe multicast ABR service within ATM is required toefficiently support many data applications including IPmulticasting. For point-to-multipoint connections,thebranch points of a multicast tree replicate cells travelingfrom root to leaves and consolidate feedback travelingfrom leaves to root [1]. The branch-point consolidationis necessary to avoid excessive backward resource man-agement (BRM) cells and to aggregate the informationfrom BRM cells received in the leaf-to-root directionfrom each branch.A number of branch-point algorithms have beenproposed as in [2]–[6]. In the design of branch-pointconsolidation algorithms there are two major con-flicting problems: consolidation delay and consolida-tion noise. Roberts [6] proposed a multicasting ABRbranch-point algorithm with fast transient responsetime. In this scheme,the branch points generate aBRM cell and return it to the source when a forwardresource management (FRM) cell is received from thesource. The returned BRM cell conveys the minimumof the explicit rates (ER) indicated by the BRM cellsreceived from the branches.In the previous work,it is shown that this algo-rithm has caused the consolidation noise problem whena returned BRM does not consolidate the feedback in-formation from all branches [5].To solve this problem,Siu et al.[4] proposed an al-gorithm without the consolidation noise. The main ideain this scheme is that a branch point passes back theBRM cell only when the BRM cells from all brancheshave been received. However,this algorithm suffers