A new class of QoS routing strategies based on network
graph reduction
q
C. Casetti
a
, R. Lo Cigno
a
, M. Mellia
a
, M. Munaf
oo
a,
*
,Z.Zs
ooka
b
a
Dipartimento di Elettronica, Politecnico di Torino, Corso Duca degli Abruzzi 24, I-10129 Torino, Italy
b
Department of Telecommunications, Budapest University of Technology and Economics, Magyar tud
oosok k
€
oor
uutja 2,
1117 Budapest, Hungary
Received 15 October 2002; received in revised form 16 October 2002; accepted 24 October 2002
Responsible Editor: I.F. Akyildiz
Abstract
This paper discusses a new approach to QoS routing, introducing the notion of algorithm resilience (i.e., its ca-
pability to adapt to network and load modifications) as performance index of the algorithm itself.
The new approach can be summarized as Network Graph Reduction, i.e., a modification of the graph describing the
network before the routing path is computed, in order to exclude from the path selection over-congested portions of the
network. This solution leads to a class of two-step routing algorithms, where both steps are simple, hence allowing
efficient implementation.
Simulation experiments, run on randomly-generated topologies and traffic patterns, show that these routing algo-
rithms perform consistently better than both the standard Minimum Hop algorithm and those QoS-based algorithms
based on the same metrics but not using the notion of Network Graph Reduction.
2002 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.
Keywords: QoS routing; Routing algorithms; MPLS
1. Introduction
Dynamic, QoS-based routing received consid-
erable attention in recent years [1–7], especially
considering the difficulty in predicting Internet
traffic patterns and the consequent impossibility to
properly plan and dimension the network.
The core of any QoS-based routing algorithm is
a network-status-dependent cost function that is
used to find the optimal (or at least a suitable)
route across the network by solving an optimiza-
tion problem. In particular, given the best-effort
nature of the current Internet where elastic data
flows are in the majority, the most commonly used
metric aims at the maximization of either network
utilization or user throughput. Several proposals
introduced cost functions, algorithms and proto-
cols that give them advantages over traditional,
q
This work was supported in part by the Italian Ministry for
University and Scientific Research through the PLANET-IP
Project. A preliminary version of this paper was presented at
IEEE Infocom 2002 in New York.
*
Corresponding author.
E-mail address: munafo@polito.it (M. Munaf
oo).
1389-1286/02/$ - see front matter 2002 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.
PII: S 1 389-12 8 6 ( 0 2 ) 0 04 1 4 - 0
Computer Networks 41 (2003) 475–487
www.elsevier.com/locate/comnet