On a new multicasting approach in optical burst switched networks

We introduce a new multicasting approach, called tree-shared multicast (TS-MCAST), in order to alleviate overheads due to control packets and guard bands associated with data bursts when transporting multicast IP traffic in optical burst-switched WDM networks. We describe three tree sharing strategies and discuss implementation issues in constructing shared multicast trees for supporting TS-MCAST. Finally, we show the efficiency of TS-MCAST using simulation results.