When a computer network is built upon another computer network it is known as

the Overlay network.In the overlay network the nodes are believed to be connected
virtually .These networks are widely accepted in telecommunication due to the
availability of digital circuit switching gadgets and optical fibres.Overlay
multicasting is famous as End System Multicast. Multicast decouples the measure of
the recipient set from the measure of state kept at any single hub and possibly
keeps away from excess correspondence in the system.

Dijkstra's

Dijkstras algorithm that has been used to find shortest paths between
nodes in graphs can also be used to find the shortest path in network
to aide multicast path.

Dijkstra(Graph, source):

Create a vertex set Q

for each of the vertex v in the Graph:

distance[v] INFINITY
previous[v] UNDEFINED
add v to Q

distance[source] 0

while Q is not empty:

u vertex in Q with min distance[u]
remove u from Q

for each neighbour v of u:

alt distance[u] + length(u, v)
if alt < distance[v]:
distance[v] alt
prev[v] u
return distance[], previous[]
return dist[], prev[]
The Steiner Tree Problem is aimed at finding minimum cost Steiner Tree. Lets understand this
problem with the help of following example-

a and d are given terminal vertices

This is the minimum steiner tree for the above graph-

c is the steiner graph.

Shortest Path based approximate Algorithm

Steiner tree problem being a NP-Hard does not provide with polynomial solutions that shall give optimal
cost ,but there are approximate algorithms derived to solve it.One such algorithm follows-

1) Start with the subtree T consisting of

one of the given terminal vertex

2) While T does not span all the terminals

a) Select a terminal a not in T that is closest

to a vertex in T.

b) Add to T the shortest path that connects a with T