Lightpath- and Light-Tree-Based Groupcast Routing and Wavelength Assignment in Mesh Optical Networks

With wide deployment of optical transport networks and the emergence of bandwidth-intensive applications, the idea of multicasts and groupcasts in optical networks stems from the ability to set up optical point-to-multipoint (multicast) and multipoint-to-multipoint (groupcast) sessions in wavelength-routed networks. As the technology for intelligent optical networks grows, optical groupcast applications (such as grid computing, distributed interactive simulations, multimedia-rich interactive services, virtual private network services, personal-customized content authoring services, and Ethernet LAN services) will become widely popular. In this paper we introduce the concept of groupcast routing and wavelength assignment (GC-RWA) and evaluate the performance of GC-RWA for light-forests corresponding to the groupcast sessions, when these light-forests are composed of lightpaths and light-trees.