Comparative study on overlay multicast routing algorithms´ design methods

Compared with IP multicast, overlay multicast has obvious advantages in terms of deployment, but usually consumes more underlying network resources. In this paper, we present a comparative study on some existing typical overlay multicast routing algorithms. According to the graph models of basic overlay networks that overlay multicast delivery structures are constructed from these routing algorithms can be divided into three categories, namely: based on complete graph, based on mesh, and based on partial tree. We compared some typical routing algorithms of the three categories in many aspects through simulation at the same underlying physical network conditions and got some useful study results which can provide beneficial guidance and help to build network applications that depend on overlay multicast.