This paper investigates routing algorithms that compute paths along which combined unicast and multicast traffic can be forwarded altogether, i.e., over the same path. For this purpose, the concept of AnyTraffic group is introduced that defines a set of nodes capable to process both unicast and multicast traffic received from the same (AnyTraffic) tree. The resulting scheme is referred to as AnyTraffic routing. This paper defines a heuristic algorithm to accommodate the AnyTraffic group and to find the proper set of branch nodes of the tree. The algorithm supports dynamic changes of the leaf node set during multicast session lifetime by adapting the corresponding tree upon deterioration threshold detection. Studies are performed for both static and dynamic traffic scenarios to i) determine the dependencies of the algorithm (node degree, clustering coefficient and group size); and ii) evaluate its performance under dynamic conditions. Initial results show that the AnyTraffic algorithm can successfully handle dynamic requests while achieving considerable reduction of forwarding state consumption with small increase in bandwidth utilization compared to the Steiner Tree algorithm.

Peer Reviewed