Multicast flow routing: Evaluation of heuristics and multiobjective evolutionary algorithms

In this work, a multiobjective genetic algorithm-based model for multicast flow routing with QoS and Traffic Engineering requirements is discussed. Two heuristics for subtree reconnection are investigated, applicable in crossover and mutation operators. Experiments with three multiobjective evolutionary algorithms (NSGA-II, SPEA and SPEA2) and the proposed heuristics are carried on, whose results indicate that SPEA2 overcame SPEA and NSGA-II, besides providing the best combination with one the heuristics, obtaining the best average results. This work also shows that the proposed heuristics guarantee the consistency of the proposed model, since they fix a previous heuristic that can potentially generate invalid solutions.