Distributed path selection (DPS) a traffic engineering protocol for IP-networks

The path selection strategy of an autonomous system (AS) has got a strong impact on the latency of packets travelling through the AS and the throughput of the underlying network. In theoretical analysis it has been shown for a simple load balancing approach that it can achieve a near optimal packet throughput even in the case of a dynamically changing network and for adversarial packet injections. Similar results have not been shown for any other protocol. The drawbacks of this load balancing approach are that it requires a large amount of information that has to be spread among the network, that it does not detect the drop out of nodes, and that it requires a complex buffer management. In this paper we examine the new routing protocol DPS (distributed path selection) that is based on this simple load balancing approach. DPS overcomes its restrictions by the use of new protocol enhancements and is able to transfer the optimal properties of the load balancing approach into a routing protocol. Comparing DPS with OSPF and RIP by simulation, we show that DPS is able to significantly improve the properties of the path system by considering the network topology as well as the traffic pattern while calculating the path system in a reasonable amount of time.