Improving Inter-AS Quality of Service through Multi-homing Smart Routing: Tackling the Interaction with Traffic Engineering

Authors

Abstract

Multi-homing Smart Routing plays a significant role in improving the performance of Internet access of IP Network Customers through dynamic path switching. On the other hand, Inter-domain Traffic Engineering becomes indispensable for IP Network Providers, in order for them to meet their traffic objectives. Unfortunately, this ability of both parties to choose their own routing policies does not necessary lead to the best routing in the Internet. A major challenge of the research on Traffic Engineering and Internet Routing architectures is to accommodate this tussle. In this work, we first analyse the interactions between Inter-domain Smart Routing and Traffic Engineering through intuitive descriptions and a simulation model. In our evaluations, we observed that the overall stability can benefit from combining Inter-domain Adaptive Smart Routing and Traffic Engineering. However, depending of the adopted traffic objectives the effectiveness of Inter-domain Traffic Engineering can be negatively affected by inter-domain Smart Routing changes. To alleviate this later problem, we then describe and present preliminary performance results of a cooperative framework in which IP Network Providers advertise agnostic routing preferences to Smart Routing, observing the Traffic Engineering objectives. In short, this framework enables IP Network Providers to assist Smart Routing in their path decisions, while still meet the Traffic objectives of both parties.

Conference

Tutorial and Ph.D. Student Workshop of Med Hoc Net 2007, June 2007