Patterns for routing and self-stabilization

The paper contributes towards engineering self-stabilizing networks and services. We propose the use of navigation patterns, which define how information for state updates is disseminated in the system, as fundamental building blocks for self-stabilizing systems. We present two navigation patterns for self-stabilization: the progressive wave pattern and the stationary wave pattern. The progressive wave pattern defines the update dissemination in Internet routing systems running the DUAL and OSPF (open shortest path first) protocols. Similarly, the stationary wave pattern defines the interactions of peer nodes in structured peer-to-peer systems, including Chord, Pastry, Tapestry, and CAN. It turns out that the two patterns are related. They both disseminate information in the form of waves, i.e, sets of messages that originate from single events. Patterns can be instrumented to obtain wave statistics, which enables monitoring the process of self-stabilization in a system. We focus on Internet routing and peer-to-peer systems, since we believe that studying these (existing) systems can lead to engineering principles for self-stabilizing systems in various application areas.