Asynchronous Network Coded Multicast

Abstract

We consider the problem of setting up a multicast connection of minimum cost using network coding. It is well-known that this can be posed in the form of a convex program. Our contribution is an asynchronous algorithm for solving the optimization problem, in analogy to the well-known distributed asynchronous Bellman-Ford algorithm for routing. Furthermore, we provide extensive simulation results showing fast convergence despite the lack of any central clock in the network and robustness with respect to link- or node failures.