Evaluation of Low-Distortion Approximation Methods For Overlay Multicast Tree construction

Abstract

In this paper we investigate the performance of distortion-bounded approximation methods for overlay multicast tree construction and compare them to common overlay multicast tree construction techniques such as the minimum spanning tree (MST) and core-based trees. We study the fanout-distortion tradeoff of these techniques on both synthetic and real Internet topologies. The performance results vary not only between different methods but also between different topologies. Our study of the fanout-distortion tradeoff reveals that low distortion approximation methods sacrifice fanout for low distortion suggesting a more careful design in order to balance both mertics. Furthermore, MST outperforms low distortion approximation methods both in distortion and fanout, especially on realistic Internet topologies, even though it was not designed to optimize distortion or fanout.