Exploiting the power of multiplicity: a holistic survey of network-layer multipath

The Internet is inherently a multipath network: For an underlying network with only a single path, connecting various nodes would have been debilitatingly fragile. Unfortunately, traditional Internet technologies have been designed around the restrictive assumption of a single working path between a source and a destination. The lack of native multipath support constrains network performance even as the underlying network is richly connected and has redundant multiple paths. Computer networks can exploit the power of multiplicity, through which a diverse collection of paths is resource pooled as a single resource, to unlock the inherent redundancy of the Internet. This opens up a new vista of opportunities, promising increased throughput (through concurrent usage of multiple paths) and increased reliability and fault tolerance (through the use of multiple paths in backup/redundant arrangements). There are many emerging trends in networking that signify that the Internet's future will be multipath, including the use of multipath technology in data center computing; the ready availability of multiple heterogeneous radio interfaces in wireless (such as Wi-Fi and cellular) in wireless devices; ubiquity of mobile devices that are multihomed with heterogeneous access networks; and the development and standardization of multipath transport protocols such as multipath TCP. The aim of this paper is to provide a comprehensive survey of the literature on network-layer multipath solutions. We will present a detailed investigation of two important design issues, namely, the control plane problem of how to compute and select the routes and the data plane problem of how to split the flow on the computed paths. The main contribution of this paper is a systematic articulation of the main design issues in network-layer multipath routing along with a broad-ranging survey of the vast literature on network-layer multipathing. We also highlight open issues and identify directions for future work

Scalable and Efficient Multipath Routing: Complexity and Algorithms

A fundamental unsolved challenge in multipath routing is to provide disjoint end-to-end paths, each one satisfying certain operational goals (e.g., shortest possible), without overwhelming the data plane with prohibitive amount of forwarding state. In this paper, we study the problem of finding a pair of shortest disjoint paths that can be represented by only two forwarding table entries per destination. Building on prior work on minimum length redundant trees, we show that the underlying mathematical problem is NP-complete and we present heuristic algorithms that improve the known complexity bounds from cubic to the order of a single shortest path search. Finally, by extensive simulations we find that it is possible to very closely attain the absolute optimal path length with our algorithms (the gap is just 1–5%), eventually opening the door for wide-scale multipath routing deployments

Improving Efficiency and Effectiveness of Multipath Routing in Computer Networks

In this dissertation, we studied methods for improving efficiency and effectiveness of multipath routing in computer networks. We showed that multipath routing can improve network performance for failure recovery, load balancing, Quality of Service (QoS), and energy consumption. We presented a method for reducing the overhead of computing dynamic path metrics, one of the obstacles for implementing dynamic multipath routing in real world networks. In the first part, we proposed a method for building disjoint multipaths that could be used for local failure recovery as well as for multipath routing. Proactive failure recovery schemes have been recently proposed for continuous service of delay-sensitive applications during failure transients at the cost of extra infrastructural support in the form of routing table entries, extra addresses, etc. These extra infrastructure supports could be exploited to build alternative disjoint paths in those frameworks, while keeping the lengths of the alternative paths close to those of the primary paths. The evaluations showed that it was possible to extend the proactive failure recovery schemes to provide support for nearly-disjoint paths which could be employed in multipath routing for load balancing and QoS. In the second part, we proposed a method for reducing overhead of measuring dynamic link state information for multipath routing, specifically path delays used in Wardrop routing. Even when dynamic routing could be shown to offer convergence properties without oscillations, it has not been widely adopted. One of reasons was that the expected cost of keeping the link metrics updated at various nodes in the network. We proposed threshold-based updates to propagate the link state only when the currently measured link state differs from the last updated state consider- ably. Threshold-based updates were shown through analysis and simulations to offer bounded guarantees on path quality while significantly reducing the cost of propagating the dynamic link metric information. The simulation studies indicated that threshold based updates can reduce the number of link updates by up to 90-95% in some cases. In the third part, we proposed methods of using multipath routing for reducing energy consumption in computer networks. Two different approaches have been advocated earlier, from traffic engineering and topology control to hardware-based approaches. We proposed solutions at two different time scales. On a finer time granularity, we employed a method of forwarding through alternate paths to enable longer sleep schedules of links. The proposed schemes achieved more energy saving by increasing the usage of active links and the down time of sleeping links as well as avoiding too frequent link state changes. To the best of our knowledge, this was the first technique combining a routing scheme with hardware scheme to save energy consumption in networks. In our evaluation, alternative forwarding reduced energy consumption by 10% on top of a hardware-based sleeping scheme. On a longer time granularity, we proposed a technique that combined multipath routing with topology control. The proposed scheme achieved increased energy savings by maximizing the link utilization on a reduced topology where the number of active nodes and links are minimized. The proposed technique reduced energy consumption by an additional 17% over previous schemes with single/shortest path routing

A reliable and resource aware framework for data dissemination in wireless sensor networks

Distinctive from traditional wireless ad hoc networks, wireless sensor networks (WSN) comprise a large number of low-cost miniaturized nodes each acting autonomously and equipped with short-range wireless communication mechanism, limited memory, processing power, and a physical sensing capability. Since sensor networks are resource constrained in terms of power, bandwidth and computational capability, an optimal system design radically changes the performance of the sensor network. Here, a comprehensive information dissemination scheme for wireless sensor networks is performed. Two main research issues are considered: (1) a collaborative flow of information packet/s from the source to sink and (2) energy efficiency of the sensor nodes and the entire system. For the first issue, we designed and evaluated a reactive and on-demand routing paradigm for distributed sensing applications. We name this scheme as IDLF-Information Dissemination via Label ForwarDing IDLF incorporates point to point data transmission where the source initiates the routing scheme and disseminates the information toward the sink (destination) node. Prior to transmission of actual data packet/s, a data tunnel is formed followed by the source node issuing small label information to its neighbors locally. These labels are in turn disseminated in the network. By using small size labels, IDLF avoids generation of unnecessary network traffic and transmission of duplicate packets to nodes. To study the impact of node failures and to improve the reliability of the network, we developed another scheme which is an extension to IDLF. This new scheme, RM-IDLF - Reliable Multipath Information dissemination by Label Forwarding, employ an alternate disjoint path. This alternate path scheme (RM-IDLF) may have a higher path cost in terms of energy consumption, but is more reliable in terms of data packet delivery to sink than the single path scheme (IDLF). In the latter scheme, the protocol establishes multiple (alternate) disjoint path/s from source to destination with negligible control overhead to balance load due to heavy data traffic among intermediate nodes from source to the destination. Another point of interest in this framework is the study of trade-offs between the achieved routing reliability using multiple disjoint path routing and extra energy consumption due to the use of additional path/s. Also, the effect of the failed nodes on the network performance is evaluated within the sensor system; Performance of the label dissemination scheme is evaluated and compared with the classic flooding and SPIN. (Abstract shortened by UMI.)

Improving Efficiency and Effectiveness of Multipath Routing in Computer Networks

In this dissertation, we studied methods for improving efficiency and effectiveness of multipath routing in computer networks. We showed that multipath routing can improve network performance for failure recovery, load balancing, Quality of Service (QoS), and energy consumption. We presented a method for reducing the overhead of computing dynamic path metrics, one of the obstacles for implementing dynamic multipath routing in real world networks. In the first part, we proposed a method for building disjoint multipaths that could be used for local failure recovery as well as for multipath routing. Proactive failure recovery schemes have been recently proposed for continuous service of delay-sensitive applications during failure transients at the cost of extra infrastructural support in the form of routing table entries, extra addresses, etc. These extra infrastructure supports could be exploited to build alternative disjoint paths in those frameworks, while keeping the lengths of the alternative paths close to those of the primary paths. The evaluations showed that it was possible to extend the proactive failure recovery schemes to provide support for nearly-disjoint paths which could be employed in multipath routing for load balancing and QoS. In the second part, we proposed a method for reducing overhead of measuring dynamic link state information for multipath routing, specifically path delays used in Wardrop routing. Even when dynamic routing could be shown to offer convergence properties without oscillations, it has not been widely adopted. One of reasons was that the expected cost of keeping the link metrics updated at various nodes in the network. We proposed threshold-based updates to propagate the link state only when the currently measured link state differs from the last updated state consider- ably. Threshold-based updates were shown through analysis and simulations to offer bounded guarantees on path quality while significantly reducing the cost of propagating the dynamic link metric information. The simulation studies indicated that threshold based updates can reduce the number of link updates by up to 90-95% in some cases. In the third part, we proposed methods of using multipath routing for reducing energy consumption in computer networks. Two different approaches have been advocated earlier, from traffic engineering and topology control to hardware-based approaches. We proposed solutions at two different time scales. On a finer time granularity, we employed a method of forwarding through alternate paths to enable longer sleep schedules of links. The proposed schemes achieved more energy saving by increasing the usage of active links and the down time of sleeping links as well as avoiding too frequent link state changes. To the best of our knowledge, this was the first technique combining a routing scheme with hardware scheme to save energy consumption in networks. In our evaluation, alternative forwarding reduced energy consumption by 10% on top of a hardware-based sleeping scheme. On a longer time granularity, we proposed a technique that combined multipath routing with topology control. The proposed scheme achieved increased energy savings by maximizing the link utilization on a reduced topology where the number of active nodes and links are minimized. The proposed technique reduced energy consumption by an additional 17% over previous schemes with single/shortest path routing

Finding multiple maximally redundant trees in linear time

Redundant trees are directed spanning trees, which provide disjoint paths towards their roots. Therefore, this concept is widely applied in the literature both for providing protection and load sharing. The fastest algorithm can find multiple redundant trees, a pair of them rooted at each vertex, in linear time. Unfortunately, edge- or vertex-redundant trees can only be found in 2-edge- or 2-vertex-connected graphs respectively. Therefore, the concept of maximally redundant trees was introduced, which can overcome this problem, and provides maximally disjoint paths towards the common root. In this paper, we propose the first linear time algorithm, which can compute a pair of maximally redundant trees rooted at not only one, but at each vertex