Multi-Destination Communication Over Single-Hop Lightwave WDM Networks

Abstract

The importance of computer applications and telecommunication services relying on efficient multi-destination communication is growing rapidly. It is now likely that a significant portion of the overall traffic in future communication environments will be of the multi-destination type. At the same time, lightwave technology is emerging as a promising candidate for implementing the next generation of multiuser high-speed networks. In this paper we address the open issue of providing efficient mechanisms for multi-destination communication over one class of lightwave WDM architectures, namely, single-hop networks. We suggest, analyze, and optimize several alternative approaches for broadcast/multicast. One of our major contributions is the development of a suite of adaptive multicast protocols which have superior performance, are very simple to implement, and are insensitive to propagation delays.