A multicast switching network for B-ISDN

To support broadband integrated services digital networks (B-ISDN), switching networks must have the ability to provide both multipoint connections (multicasting) and point-to-point connections (unicasting). This paper proposes a multicast switching network based on a recently proposed routing network which consists of two banyan networks with links at every stage to allow cell transfer to and from each banyan plane, thereby offering multiple paths between each input-output pair. The proposed multicast network employs the copy and routing networks in a parallel configuration. This approach allows for unicast cells to proceed to the routing network without additional delay and keeps the copy network free of unicast traffic which results in a larger amount of the multicast requests to be successfully replicated. Using simulations, the proposed multicast network was shown to offer better performance than other networks in terms of cell loss rates.<>