Integration of flow and QOS control in multicast routing

Current works on QOS-routing allow flow and QOS control to be exercised on multicast paths after an underlying routing protocol (e.g., DVMRP and CBT) sets up these paths. The 'QOS-control-after-routing' paradigm limits the ability of routers to provide cost-efficient routing (in a network-wide sense) because they can explore only those paths already set up even if more cost-efficient alternate paths exist. This motivates the need to integrate routing with flow and QOS control, wherein alternate paths can be considered to enable cost-efficient path setups. The paper proposes scalable IntServ-style mechanisms at the flow management and routing protocol levels.