BIB-VERSION:: CS-TR-v2.0
          ID:: STAN//CSL-TR-94-653
       ENTRY:: December 21, 1994
ORGANIZATION:: Stanford University, Computer Systems Laboratory
       TITLE:: Routing of Video/Audio Streams In Packet-Switched Networks
        TYPE:: Thesis
        TYPE:: Technical Report
      AUTHOR:: Noronha, Ciro A., Jr.
        DATE:: December 1994
       PAGES:: 213
    ABSTRACT:: The transport of multimedia streams in computer communication
               networks raises issues at all layers of the OSI model. This
               thesis considers some of the issues related to supporting
               multimedia streams at the network layer; in particular, the
               issue of appropriate routing algorithms. New routing
               algorithms, capable of efficiently meeting multimedia
               requirements, are needed.

               We formulate the optimum multipoint stream routing problem as
               a linear integer programming problem and propose an efficient
               solution technique. We show that the proposed solution
               technique significantly decreases the time to compute the
               solution, when compared to traditional methods.

               We use the optimum multicast stream routing problem as a
               benchmark to characterize the performance of existing
               heuristic algorithms under realistic network and traffic
               scenarios, and derive guidelines for using their usage and
               for upgrading the network capacity.

               We also consider the problem of routing multimedia streams in
               a Wavelength-Division Multiplexing (WDM) optical network,
               which has an additional degree of freedom over traditional
               networks - its topology can be changed by the routing
               algorithm to create routes as needed, by tuning optical
               transmitters and/or receivers. We show that the optimum
               reconfiguration and routing problem can formulated as a
               linear integer programming problem. Since this is a complex
               solution, we also propose a set of heuristic algorithms, both
               for unicast and multicast routing. We evaluate the
               performance of the proposed heuristics and derive guidelines
               for their usage.
       NOTES:: [Adminitrivia V1/Prg/19941221]
         END:: STAN//CSL-TR-94-653