Profile-Based Routing: A New Framework for MPLS Traffic Engineering

Abstract

We present a new algorithm and framework for dynamic routing of bandwidth guaranteed flows. The problem is motivated by the need to dynamically set up bandwidth guaranteed paths in carrier and ISP networks. Traditional routing algorithms such as minimum hop routing or widest path routing do not take advantage of any knowledge about the traffic distribution or ingress-egress pairs, and therefore can often lead to severe network underutilization. Our work is inspired by the recently proposed “minimum interference routing” algorithm (MIRA) of Kodialam and Lakshman, but it improves on their approach in several ways. Our main idea is to use a “traffic profile” of the network, obtained by measurements or service level agreements (SLAs), as a rough predictor of the future traffic distribution. We use this profile to solve a multicom-modity network flow problem, whose output is used both to guide our online path selection algorithm as well as impose admission control. The offline multicommodity solution seems very effective at distributing the routes and avoiding bottlenecks around hot spots. In particular, our algorithm can anticipate a flow’s blocking effect on groups of ingress-egress pairs, while MIRA only considers one ingress-egress pair at a time. Our simulation results show that the new algorithm outperforms shortest path, widest path, and minimum interference routing algorithms on several metrics, including the fraction of requests routed and the fraction of requested bandwidth routed. Finally, the framework is quite general and can be extended in numerous ways to accommodate a variety of traffic management priorities in the network.

Research performed at Washington University in St. Louis, partially supported by NSF grant ANI 9813723.