Distributed routing with on-line marginal delay estimation

A procedure is presented for estimating online marginal packet delays through links with respect to link flows without making the standard assumptions (exponentially distributed packet lengths, Poisson arrival processes). This procedure is based on a technique known as perturbation analysis. No knowledge of network parameters (arrival rates, link capacities) is required. This is used in the context of a minimum delay distributed routing algorithm for real-time implementation. Experimental results are included to investigate the effect of the algorithm step-size and observation period parameters, demonstrate the adaptivity of the approach, and compare it to well-known analytical approximation