An efficient scheme for QoS information update among edge routers using multicast

It is essential and nontrivial to disseminate QoS information in an efficient manner and to guarantee the information accuracy. We present an efficient scheme for QoS information update among edge routers in a diffserv region. In our scheme, a multicast tree is constructed among the edge routers in a diffserv region to transmit the updates. This scheme is efficient in consuming network resources since the cost for QoS information update of using a tree is much less than using a flooding approach, and routers unrelated to decision-making are relieved from disseminating and storing QoS information. In addition, it is easy to implement our scheme in the Internet, since only edge routers need to deploy it. We investigate quantitatively the cost of our scheme for QoS information update against a flooding approach and study empirically the efficiency of several proposed QoS information update policies.