Patent · US Expired

System and method for hierarchical multicast routing in ATM networks

US5831975A · kind A · utility

235Cited by
7References
23Claims
0Family size

Assignee

Inventors

Key dates

Filing dateApr 4, 1996
Grant dateNov 3, 1998
Priority date
Expiry dateApr 4, 2016

Classification

  • Technology area (CPC H)Electricity
  • CPC primaryH04L2012/5642
  • WIPO fieldDigital communication
  • WIPO sectorElectrical engineering

Abstract

The present invention extends the PNNI protocols to support hierarchical multicast routing and signaling for ATM networks. The invention utilizes an extension to a core-based tree algorithm. Instead of a single core node, core nodes are maintained in each peer-group and at each level of the hierarchy. The advantage of this is that one single core node is not overloaded. Additionally, this increases fault-tolerance because there are no single points of failure. As would be understood, the present invention is highly scaleable because of the hierarchical nature of PNNI. In addition, the scheme supports multiple senders and dynamic membership changes to the multicast group. Quality of service requirements can be negotiated during connection setup and are guaranteed during the course of the connection. Though some additional topological information has to be flooded in the peer-groups to compute efficient multicast routes, the overheads to the connection management are minimal. The multicast tree is built incrementally and the cost of the tree is comparable to the cost of the Steiner Tree computed using some standard heuristics.

Source: USPTO / EPO open patent data. Objective bibliographic and citation counts.