Switch-aided flooding operations in ATM networks

In this paper, we propose a flooding method, called switch-aided flooding (SAF), for use in ATM networks. SAF-based protocols take advantage of hardware-supported cell relay and cell duplication, characteristic of such networks, in order to reduce the time needed to disseminate changes in network topology and resource availability. SAF protocols use a spanning multipoint connection (SMC), which is a hardware-switched network spanning tree, but revert to conventional link-by-link flooding when the spanning MC is unavailable or under construction. The results of a simulation study reveal that the proposed flooding protocols deliver network updates several times faster than conventional approaches, while using significantly less bandwidth