Fast link state flooding

High network availability and fault tolerant behavior are seen as crucial network properties in future carrier and Internet service provider IP networks. In order to provide high availability, it is crucial that the routing system react quickly to failures and outages. Link state routing protocols are used in Internet service provider networks for intra-domain routing. Link state routing protocols are robust for route distribution but currently cannot provide fast convergence after failures, which is needed for high network availability. This paper discusses one performance problem with link state protocols-link state flooding speed-and proposes a solution. The solution, fast link state update (LSU) flooding, enables faster flooding of link state information and therefore faster convergence times