Resource reservation and packet scheduling for prioritized delay-bounded multicast

A resource reservation algorithm and a packet scheduling algorithm for the prioritized delay-bounded problem are presented. The basic notion is to employ RSVP reservation messages to establish the multicast tree and reserve bandwidth en route. Routing RSVP messages with the assistance of the priority and delay information provided by receivers is intended to optimize the resource utilization of the network. As the tree gradually builds up, the latest departure time at each node is estimated using the delay associated with the reserved bandwidth. The latest departure time is used to compute the timestamp for packets that arrives at the node, which is in turn used by the the scheduling algorithm for scheduling the packets. Fairness is achieved by monitoring the bandwidth shared after each packet is sent out, instead of tracking fairness before a packet can be served. This approach abstains from sorting the backlogged connections and hence reduces to constant scheduling time complexity.