Multi‐path routing scheme for non‐interactive multicast communications

This paper proposes a multicast routing algorithm that makes use of multiple node‐disjoint distribution trees for its routing from the source to the multicast group members. The specialty of this scheme is that the different packets of a message between a source and destinations are routed through node‐disjoint paths to provide reliable and secure multicast communication. In this proposed routing scheme the computation of the node‐disjoint path for packet routing is done either at a centralized route moderator or in a distributed fashion at all destinations in order to avoid single point failure. An effective provision is made to enable new members to join the existing multicast trees and to prune leaving members. The performance parameters of the proposed reliable and secure multi‐path routing scheme are studied under various network conditions using GloMoSim. Copyright © 2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.