484 research outputs found
Lying Your Way to Better Traffic Engineering
To optimize the flow of traffic in IP networks, operators do traffic
engineering (TE), i.e., tune routing-protocol parameters in response to traffic
demands. TE in IP networks typically involves configuring static link weights
and splitting traffic between the resulting shortest-paths via the
Equal-Cost-MultiPath (ECMP) mechanism. Unfortunately, ECMP is a notoriously
cumbersome and indirect means for optimizing traffic flow, often leading to
poor network performance. Also, obtaining accurate knowledge of traffic demands
as the input to TE is elusive, and traffic conditions can be highly variable,
further complicating TE. We leverage recently proposed schemes for increasing
ECMP's expressiveness via carefully disseminated bogus information ("lies") to
design COYOTE, a readily deployable TE scheme for robust and efficient network
utilization. COYOTE leverages new algorithmic ideas to configure (static)
traffic splitting ratios that are optimized with respect to all (even
adversarially chosen) traffic scenarios within the operator's "uncertainty
bounds". Our experimental analyses show that COYOTE significantly outperforms
today's prevalent TE schemes in a manner that is robust to traffic uncertainty
and variation. We discuss experiments with a prototype implementation of
COYOTE
Cautious Weight Tuning for Link State Routing Protocols
Link state routing protocols are widely used for intradomain routing in the Internet. These protocols are simple to administer and automatically update paths between sources and destinations when the topology changes. However, finding link weights that optimize network performance for a given traffic scenario is computationally hard. The situation is even more complex when the traffic is uncertain or time-varying. We present an efficient heuristic for finding link settings that give uniformly good performance also under large changes in the traffic. The heuristic combines efficient search techniques with a novel objective function. The objective function combines network performance with a cost of deviating from desirable features of robust link weight settings. Furthermore, we discuss why link weight optimization is insensitive to errors in estimated traffic data from link load measurements. We assess performance of our method using traffic data from an operational IP backbone
Combined Intra- and Inter-domain Traffic Engineering using Hot-Potato Aware Link Weights Optimization
A well-known approach to intradomain traffic engineering consists in finding
the set of link weights that minimizes a network-wide objective function for a
given intradomain traffic matrix. This approach is inadequate because it
ignores a potential impact on interdomain routing. Indeed, the resulting set of
link weights may trigger BGP to change the BGP next hop for some destination
prefixes, to enforce hot-potato routing policies. In turn, this results in
changes in the intradomain traffic matrix that have not been anticipated by the
link weights optimizer, possibly leading to degraded network performance.
We propose a BGP-aware link weights optimization method that takes these
effects into account, and even turns them into an advantage. This method uses
the interdomain traffic matrix and other available BGP data, to extend the
intradomain topology with external virtual nodes and links, on which all the
well-tuned heuristics of a classical link weights optimizer can be applied. A
key innovative asset of our method is its ability to also optimize the traffic
on the interdomain peering links. We show, using an operational network as a
case study, that our approach does so efficiently at almost no extra
computational cost.Comment: 12 pages, Short version to be published in ACM SIGMETRICS 2008,
International Conference on Measurement and Modeling of Computer Systems,
June 2-6, 2008, Annapolis, Maryland, US
Energy management in communication networks: a journey through modelling and optimization glasses
The widespread proliferation of Internet and wireless applications has
produced a significant increase of ICT energy footprint. As a response, in the
last five years, significant efforts have been undertaken to include
energy-awareness into network management. Several green networking frameworks
have been proposed by carefully managing the network routing and the power
state of network devices.
Even though approaches proposed differ based on network technologies and
sleep modes of nodes and interfaces, they all aim at tailoring the active
network resources to the varying traffic needs in order to minimize energy
consumption. From a modeling point of view, this has several commonalities with
classical network design and routing problems, even if with different
objectives and in a dynamic context.
With most researchers focused on addressing the complex and crucial
technological aspects of green networking schemes, there has been so far little
attention on understanding the modeling similarities and differences of
proposed solutions. This paper fills the gap surveying the literature with
optimization modeling glasses, following a tutorial approach that guides
through the different components of the models with a unified symbolism. A
detailed classification of the previous work based on the modeling issues
included is also proposed
Robust routing
In a network, traffic demands are known with a degree of uncertainty, traffic engineering should take into account the traffic variability. In this research work we focus on the robust routing under changing network conditions. Daily Internet traffic pattern shows that network is vulnerable to malicious attacks, denial of service attacks, worms and viruses. Oblivious routing has a substantially better performance than open shortest path first [OSPF] routing for different level of uncertainty. We propose a theoretical framework for Robust Routing aiming to improve online and offline traffic engineering approaches
Robust traffic engineering
Phenomenal growth of Internet applications in recent years have made it difficult to forecast traffic patterns. Daily Internet traffic patterns shows that the network is vulnerable to malicious attacks, flash crowds and denial of service attacks (DDoS). In this paper, we present a robust routing technique (RRT) that attempts to deal with both normal routing conditions and transient failures. Our simulation results are compared with OSPF-TE. The key advantage of RRT is its convergence to generate the solution. It converges quickly to produce the simulation result on the family of topologies we consider in this paper. We are aiming to combine the best of proactive and reactive traffic engineering in RRT
Logical topology design for IP rerouting: ASONs versus static OTNs
IP-based backbone networks are gradually moving to a network model consisting of high-speed routers that are flexibly interconnected by a mesh of light paths set up by an optical transport network that consists of wavelength division multiplexing (WDM) links and optical cross-connects. In such a model, the generalized MPLS protocol suite could provide the IP centric control plane component that will be used to deliver rapid and dynamic circuit provisioning of end-to-end optical light paths between the routers. This is called an automatic switched optical (transport) network (ASON). An ASON enables reconfiguration of the logical IP topology by setting up and tearing down light paths. This allows to up- or downgrade link capacities during a router failure to the capacities needed by the new routing of the affected traffic. Such survivability against (single) IP router failures is cost-effective, as capacity to the IP layer can be provided flexibly when necessary. We present and investigate a logical topology optimization problem that minimizes the total amount or cost of the needed resources (interfaces, wavelengths, WDM line-systems, amplifiers, etc.) in both the IP and the optical layer. A novel optimization aspect in this problem is the possibility, as a result of the ASON, to reuse the physical resources (like interface cards and WDM line-systems) over the different network states (the failure-free and all the router failure scenarios). We devised a simple optimization strategy to investigate the cost of the ASON approach and compare it with other schemes that survive single router failures
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