Dispersity Routing: Past and Present

Dispersity Routing is a multi-path routing rule that the author proposed for the ARPA-net more than 35 years ago. Since that time, dispersity routing and other multi-path routing techniques, have been proposed for many networks, for different reasons. However, dispersity routing isn´t used in any major networks. We will present some of the reasons why dispersity routing was considered and show how changes in networks have made dispersity routing less useful and more difficult to implement. Dispersity routing is currently being proposed for MANET´s and delay tolerant networks. Based on our experience with wired networks we will recommend how multi-path routing techniques should, and should not, be used in wireless networks.