Core-selection algorithms in multicast routing - comparative and complexity analysis

The Core-based approach is inevitable in multicast routing protocols as it provides efficient management of multicast path in changing group memberships, and scalability and performance. In this paper, we present a comprehensive analysis of this approach with the emphasis on core selection for the first time in literature. We first examine the evolution of multicast routing protocols into the core-based architecture and the motivation for the approach. Then we review the core-selection algorithms in the literature emphasizing their algorithmic structure and performance. Our study involves an extensive computational and message complexity analysis of each algorithm, and a classification for their deployment characteristics and algorithmic complexities. To the best of our knowledge ours is the first attempt towards providing such extensive comparative analysis of core-based multicast routing protocols.