Cross-sharing vs. self-sharing trees for protecting multicast sessions in mesh networks

In this study, we investigate a cost-effective approach for protecting several multicast sessions from any link failure in an optical network. The approach, referred to as cross-sharing, provides an optimal sharing of backup resources among several multicast sessions. Our cross-sharing approach employs the link-vector model, modified for multicast sessions, and provides significant cost savings (48% for a small six-node network and 39% for a large nationwide network) of backup resources relative to arc-disjoint and self-sharing approaches, especially for a large number of sessions.