A Steiner tree based approach for the efficient support of multipoint communications in a multi-domain context

This work proposes an approach based on Steiner trees to efficiently support multipoint communications in a multi-domain context, where each domain exposes a synthetic and aggregated view of its network. The approach that we propose is based on two pillars: The adoption of a topology aggregation of each domain's network as a Steiner tree and the use of a shortest path heuristic for the calculation of these aggregated networks as well as the global Steiner tree. An extensive experimental study on random and real network topologies shows the gains made by our approach in terms of both accuracy and computational complexity.