A Speed-Up Technique for Distributed Shortest Paths Computation

International audienceWe propose a simple and practical speed-up technique, which can be combined with every distance vector routing algorithm based on shortest paths, allowing to reduce the total number of messages sent by that algorithm. We combine the new technique with two algorithms known in the literature: DUAL, which is part of CISCO's widely used EIGRP protocol, and the recent DUST, which has been shown to be very effective on networks with power law node degree distribution. We give experimental evidence that these combinations lead to an important gain in terms of the number of messages sent by DUAL and DUST at the price of a little increase in terms of space occupancy per node

Engineering a new loop-free shortest paths routing algorithm

International audienceWe present LFR (Loop Free Routing), a new loop-free distance vector routing algorithm, which is able to update the shortest paths of a distributed network with n nodes in fully dynamic scenarios. If Phi is the total number of nodes affected by a set of updates to the network, and phi is the maximum number of destinations for which a node is affected, then LFR requires O(Phi*Delta) messages and O(n + phi*Delta) space per node, where Delta is the maximum degree of the nodes of the network. We experimentally compare LFR with DUAL, one of the most popular loop-free distance vector algorithms, which is part of CISCO's EIGRP protocol and requires O(Phi*Delta) messages and Θ(n*Delta) space per node. The experiments are based on both real-world and artificial instances and show that LFR is always the best choice in terms of memory require- ments, while in terms of messages LFR outperforms DUAL on real-world instances, whereas DUAL is the best choice on artificial instances

Enhancing the computation of distributed shortest paths on real dynamic networks

International audienceThe problem of finding and updating shortest paths in distributed networks is considered crucial in today's practical applications. In the recent past, there has been a renewed interest in devising new efficient distance-vector algorithms as an attractive alternative to link-state solutions for large-scale Ethernet networks, in which scalability and reliability are key issues or the nodes can have limited storage capabilities. In this paper we present Distributed Computation Pruning (DCP), a new technique, which can be combined with every distance-vector routing algorithm based on shortest paths, allowing to reduce the total number of messages sent by that algorithm and its space occupancy per node. To check its effectiveness, we combined DCP with DUAL (Diffuse Update ALgorithm), one of the most popular distance-vector algorithm in the literature, which is part of CISCO's widely used EIGRP protocol, and with the recently introduced LFR (Loop Free Routing) which has been shown to have good performances on real networks. We give experimental evidence that these combinations lead to a significant gain both in terms of number of messages sent and memory requirements per node