Performance Evaluation of New Multicast Architecture with Network Coding

Taku NOGUCHI  Takahiro MATSUDA  Miki YAMAMOTO  

Publication
IEICE TRANSACTIONS on Communications   Vol.E86-B   No.6   pp.1788-1795
Publication Date: 2003/06/01
Online ISSN: 
DOI: 
Print ISSN: 0916-8516
Type of Manuscript: Special Section PAPER (Special Issue on Content Delivery Networks)
Category: CDN Architecture
Keyword: 
multicast,  network coding,  network information theory,  max-flow,  

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Summary: 
Multicast transmission, which can send the same information simultaneously to multiple users, is a key technology in content delivery networks. In this paper, we discuss a new multicast architecture with network coding proposed by Li et al. , which breaks limitation of existing IP multicast in terms of network resource utilization. Network coding based multicast can achieve the max-flow, which is the theoretical upper bound of network resource utilization. However, the max-flow transmission is not always effective and may not be robust against congestion because it maximally uses link capacity of multicast distribution tree. In this paper, we first introduce a load balancing method of network coding as an alternative use to the max-flow transmission. Next, we study the feasibility of network coding based multicast architecture from performance aspect and evaluate the network coding in terms of the max-flow and load balancing with a computer simulation. There has been no evaluation of network coding in practical network environment with packet losses and propagation delay. We also describe required key techniques and technical problems to implement network coding on the current IP networks. Our results will offer valuable insight for designing the future Internet with higher and more effective network utilization.