A Practical Framework for Minimum-Delay Routing in Computer Networks

The conventional approach to routing in computer networks consists of using a heuristic to compute a single shortest path from a source to a destination. Single-path routing is very responsive to topological and link-cost changes; however, except under light traffic loads, the delays obtained with this type of routing are far from optimal. Furthermore, if link costs are associated with delays, single-path routing exhibits oscillatory behavior and becomes unstable as traffic loads increase. On the other hand, minimum-delay routing approaches can minimize delays only when traffic is stationary or very slowly changing. We presen