PEMP: Peering Equilibrium MultiPath Routing

It is generally admitted that Inter-domain peering links represent nowadays the main bottleneck of the Internet, particularly because of lack of coordination between providers, which use independent and "selfish" routing policies. We are interested in identifying possible "light" coordination strategies, that would allow carriers to better control their peering links, while preserving their independence and respective interests. We propose a robust multi-path routing coordination framework for peering carriers, which relies on the MED attribute of BGP as signalling medium. Our scheme relies on a game theoretic modelling, with a non-cooperative potential game considering both routing and congestions costs. Peering Equilibrium MultiPath (PEMP) coordination policies can be implemented by selecting Pareto-superior Nash equilibria at each carrier. We compare different PEMP policies to BGP Multipath schemes by emulating a realistic peering scenario. Our results show that the routing cost can be decreased by roughly 10% with PEMP. We also show that the stability of routes can be significantly improved and that congestion can be practically avoided on the peering links.