Tabu search based algorithms for bandwidth-delay-constrained least-cost multicast routing

The advent of various real-time multimedia applications in high-speed networks creates a need for quality of service (QoS) based multicast routing. The Steiner tree problem, is a well-known NP-complete problem, provides the mathematical structure behind multicast communications. Two important QoS constraints are the bandwidth constraint and the end-to-end delay constraint. In this paper, we propose various algorithms to solve the bandwidth-delay-constrained least-cost multicast routing problem based on Tabu Search (TS), addressing issues of the selected initial solution and move type as two major building blocks in short-term memory version of Tabu Search and longer-term memory with associated intensification and diversification strategies as advanced Tabu Search techniques. We evaluate the performance and efficiency of the proposed TS-based algorithms in comparison with other existing TS-based algorithms and heuristics on a variety of random generated networks with regard to total tree cost. Finally we identify the most efficient algorithm uncovered by our testing.