Performance Evaluation of New Multicast

Architecture with Network Coding

Taku Noguchi, Takahiro Matsuda, and Miki Yamamoto
Graduate School of Engineering, Osaka University
Yamadaoka 2-1, Suita, Osaka, 565-0871, Japan
Tel:+81-6-6879-7742, Fax:+81-6-6875-5901
Email:noguchi@post.comm.eng.osaka-u.ac.jp
AbstractIn order to enhance multicast communication, it is important to investigate effects of network
coding which can be a typical application of active network. In this paper, we study the feasibility of network
coding based multicast architecture from performance
aspect. We rst show that the network coding based
multicast has not only high transmission capacity with
the max-ow, which is an original purpose of network
coding, but also a load balancing effect which mitigates concentration of trafc load in a network. Then,
with a computer simulation, we evaluate network coding based multicast in terms of both of the max-ow
and load balancing.
Keywords Multicast, Network Coding, Network
Information Theory, Max-ow.
I. I NTRODUCTION
Contrary to ones intuition, IP multicast has a limitation in terms of network resource utilization. Basically,
in IP multicast, all receivers in a multicast group receive data with the same throughput. This means that
if there is a bottleneck link on a path from a source
to a specic receiver, the throughput is limited to the
bottleneck link capacity. This may be a critical issue
in the future Internet which enables high capacity due
to high speed transmission techniques such as WDM
optical communications. In spite of large capacity in
the whole network, multicast users may not sufciently
use the capacity due to just one bottleneck link on their
paths.
Recently, Li. et al. proposed network coding theorem[1] which enables better resource utilization. Network coding based multicast can achieve the max-ow,
which is the theoretical upper bound of network resource utilization, by allowing a network node such as
a router to encode its received data before forwarding
it. Each node implemented with network coding function receives information from all the input links, encodes, and sends information to all the output links.
Our main works in this paper are the following two
points. First, we describe an alternative use of network
coding. We found that the network coding has an effect
of load balancing instead of the max-ow transmission.

In the sense of the load balancing effect, the network

coding can be regarded as a method to realize the trafc
engineering.
Second, we study the feasibility of network coding
from performance aspect. In [1], the effect of network
coding is evaluated for simple networks where there
are no packet loss and no propagation delay. However, as we clarify in a later section, these may degrade
the performance due to the weakness of network coding. Therefore, the performance should be evaluated
in more practical network environment where there are
packet losses and propagation delay. With a computer
simulation, we evaluate the performance in terms of
both of the max-ow and load balancing.
Network coding gives us a new paradigm of multicast transmission. In order to design the future Internet
which has higher capacity and is more optimized, it is
important to study advantages and feasibility of network coding. It is worth mentioning that the extra encoding functionality at a router to implement network
coding is suited to the concept of Store-Compute-andForward in active network technology[2].
The rest of the paper is organized as follows. In the
next section, we describe the concept of network coding and its load balancing effect. We investigate performance of network coding based multicast in section
III. Finally, section IV concludes this paper.
II. N ETWORK CODING
Network coding is information encoding at a router
equipped with encoding function in addition to conventional router functions such as routing and forwarding. A router with network coding receives information (packets) from all the input links, encodes, and
forwards information to all the output links. By employing network coding, a sender can send information
with the theoretical upper bound of transmission rate,
i.e., the max-ow of a network.
We illustrate an example of network coding in g.1.
Fig.1(a) shows the capacity of each edge. From
Max-ow Min-cut theorem[3], the value of the maxow is. Fig.1(b) shows a single-session IP multicast where the sender sends information to multiple receivers. Fig.1(c) shows a multi-session IP multicast,

tributed to the entire network.

III. P ERFORMANCE EVALUATION
In this section, we evaluate the performance of network coding based multicast in an actual network environment with packet losses and network delay from
the viewpoints of the max-ow and the trafc load balancing.
A. Simulation Model
(a) Link capacity

(b) Single-session IP Multicast

Session 1:a
Session 2:b
Session 3:c

a, b

a+c,
b+d

c, d

a, b

c, d

a+c,
b+d

+:modulo 2 addition
(c) Multi-session IP Multicast

(d) Network Coding

Fig. 1. Comparison with Existing Approaches

where different multiple distribution trees are built for

the same set of the sender and receivers. The multisession IP multicast can provide effective network resource utilization because all the session does not need
to have the same distribution trees.
As shown in g.1(b),(c), in IP multicast, the sender
cannot multicast information as much as the max-ow,
e.g. even with multi-session, transmission rate of IP
multicast can be up to 3. On the other hand, network
coding can send four bits
and , which are equal
amount of a max-ow, to and simultaneously as shown in g.1(d), where + denotes modulo 2 addition. In this example, information
and
is encoded to and at the node . At a
receiver , and can be recovered from
and
. Similarly, and can be recovered from
and
at a receiver . Note that network
coding can be applied to not only this example but also
any network topologies, which is theoretically proved
in [1].
Next we investigate the load-balancing effect by
comparing network coding based multicast with existing multicast. Assume that network coding based multicast uses half of capacity in the example of g.1(d).
In this case, both a single-session IP multicast and network coding send 2 bits per unit time to all receivers.
Although in g.1(b), 2 bits are transmitted through 5
links out of 9 links (a total of 10 bits are sent) in the
network, the other 4 links are not used. On the other
hand, 1 bit is transmitted through 9 links (a total of 9
bits are sent) when network coding is used. Therefore,
by employing network coding, trafc load can be dis-

In order to show effectiveness of network coding

based multicast , we compare it with existing multicast: a single-session IP multicast and a multi-session
IP multicast. The topology used in this simulation
is the network presented in g.1(a). In this topology, coding scheme presented in g.1(d) is employed.
While a data unit of network coding such as
and is a bit in the previous section, it represents a
packet in this section. All the links within this topology are set to a bandwidth of 1.5[Mbps] and a propagation delay of 10[msec]. Each direction of a link has
a buffer limit of 50 packets. All simulations use packets of size 1 Kbytes. Packet losses are caused only by
buffer overow at a router. Poisson trafc with mean
runs through each link as a background trafc. The
sender transmits information to receivers with a constant rate . We assume that encoding/decoding time
and processing time at a sender and receivers are negligible since these times are much smaller than end-toend propagation delay.
B. Simulation Results
Fig.2 shows that average throughput for all receivers
with different . In this simulation, the sender sends
information so that data rate at each link on the path
to a receiver is [Mbps]. In this situation, when
background trafc rate is [Mbps], link utilization equals to 1 and the max-ow is achieved in network coding multicast. From g.2, network coding
based multicast can achieve higher throughput than existing multicast. However, when is more than 0.5, the
throughput falls more quickly than existing multicast.
This is because network coding based multicast is very
sensitive to loss. For example, in g.1(d), needs
four bits

to recover and . If is lost

in the network, cannot recover even if is received correctly. In this case, the encoded information
received correctly (i.e., ) is regarded as a loss because the encoded information itself is invalid. In other
words, in network coding, one bit loss in the network
results in several bits losses for receivers. However, at
least in our simulation, network coding based multicast can achieve
times higher throughput than
existing multicast.
We evaluate how much trafc load is distributed to
an entire network by performance metric of the variance of bandwidth consumed on each link. Let
de-

Network coding

Sigle-session IP multicast
Multi-session IP multicast

4.5

1.8

4
Normalized Delay

Mean Throughput at Receivers [Mbps]

2.2

1.6
1.4
1.2

3.5
3

Network coding
(R=2.0[Mbps])
Network coding
(R=1.5[Mbps])
Network coding
(R=1.0[Mbps])
Single-session IP multicast
(R=1.0[Mbps])
Multi-session IP multicast
(R=1.0[Mbps])

2.5

0.8

1.5

0.6

0.2

0.4

0.6

0.8

1
0.36

0.38

0.4

0.42

0.44

0.46

0.48

0.5

Fig. 2. Throughput performance v.s. Background Trafc Rate

Fig. 3. Normalized Delay performance v.s. Background Trafc Rate

TABLE I
B ANDWIDTH UTILIZATION

network coding based multicast with the max-ow

(
[Mbps]) and existing multicast with
or [Mbps], the capacities of links on the path
to a receiver are almost fully utilized, i.e., data rate
at these links is 1.0[Mbps]. On the other hand, trafc
is distributed to the entire network in network coding
based multicast with
and [Mbps]. The
capacities of links on the path to a receiver are not
fully utilized, i.e., data rates at these links are 0.5 and
0.75[Mbps], respectively. This means that the load balancing effect of network coding can improved delay
performance. Note that network coding based multicast with the max-ow has the worst delay performance, which is increased by
compared with
existing multicast. The reason for this is that information cannot be recovered until all information necessary to recover are received in network coding based
multicast. This negative aspect of network coding is
not serious when we use the network coding as a load
balancing technique.

Network coding ( =2.0[Mbps])

Network coding ( =1.5[Mbps])
Network coding ( =1.0[Mbps])
Single-session
IP
multicast
( =1.0[Mbps])
Multi-session
IP
multicast
( =1.5[Mbps])

[Mbps]
0.998
0.750
0.500
0.556

[Mbps ]
0
0
0
0.247

0.833

0.056

note the bandwidth consumed by multicast packets at

link , and denote the number of links within the entire network. Mean bandwidth consumed on links ,
and its variance , are given by:

where is the set of all links within a network. The

smaller values of represent that all links are used
more fairly and trafc load is highly distributed.
Table I shows bandwidth utilization of network coding based multicast and existing multicast with
[Mbps]. In network coding based multicast,
[Mbps] corresponds to the max-ow and the other
(i.e., and [Mbps]) corresponds to the alternative use of network coding where the same throughput as existing multicast is achieved. As shown in table I, the network coding based multicast has of 0
for all the case of , so it can achieve complete trafc load balancing. The reason for this result is that
information is delivered to a receiver through multiple
paths in network coding based multicast. The bandwidth consumption
can be saved in network coding
based multicast when is equal to that of existing multicast, i.e. and [Mbps], since by employing
network coding, network bandwidth is used efciently.
Fig. 3 shows average delay characteristics, which
are dened as the times elapsed between the transmission of a packet at the sender and receipt of that
packet at a receiver. The delay is normalized with
one-way packet delay without queueing delay. In

IV. C ONCLUSIONS
In this paper, we evaluate performance of network
coding based multicast in terms of both the max-ow
and load balancing. Compared with IP multicast,
network coding based multicast can achieve higher
throughput due to the max-ow transmission. Furthermore, network coding which has the same throughput
as IP multicast , can achieve better trafc load balancing and save network bandwidth. This means network
coding is effective from the viewpoints of not only enabling max-ow transmission but also trafc load balancing in a network.
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