IP network expansion for growing traffic demand with shortest path routing compared to traffic engineering

We investigate the effect of traffic engineering in order to allow for higher throughput of traffic in the network by balancing the load on the links. A network-wide optimization of paths for traffic flows can be used to maximize the amount of delivered traffic in a predefined topology. Based on previously developed optimization algorithms, we compare traffic engineering to pure shortest path first routing during a continuous process of expanding the link capacities to cope with increasing Internet traffic. We consider case studies and bounds on the efficiency of traffic engineering.