Traffic Engineering using Multipath Routing Approaches

Date
2007-12
Authors
Mazandu, Gaston Kuzamunu
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Abstract
It is widely recognized that Traffic engineering (TE) mechanisms have to be added to the IP transport functionalities to provide QoS guarantees while ensuring efficient use of network resources. Traffic engineering is a network management technique which routes traffic to where bandwidth is available in the network to achieve QoS agreements between current and future demands and the available network resources. Multi-path routing has been proven to be a more efficient TE mechanism than Shortest Path First (SPF) routing in terms of proffit maximization and resource usage optimization. However the identiffication of set of paths over which traffic is forwarded from source to the destination and the distribution of traffic among these paths are two issues that have been widely addressed by the IP community but remain an open issue for the emerging generation IP networks. Building upon different frameworks, this thesis revisits the issue of multi-path routing to present and evaluate the performance of different traffic splitting mechanisms to achieve QoS routing in Multi-Protocol Label Switching (MPLS) and Wireless Sensor Networks (WSNs). Three main contributions are identified in this thesis. First, we extend an optimization model that used the M/M/1 queueing model on a simple network consisting of a single source-destination pair by using the M/M/s queueing model on a general network consisting of several source-destination pairs. The model solves a multi-path routing problem by defining a Hamiltonian as a function of delay incurred and subjecting this Hamiltonian to Pontryagin's cost minimization to achieve efficient diffusion of traffic over the available parallel paths. Second, we revisit the problem of cost-based optimization in a multi-path setting by using a Game theoretical framework to propose and evaluate the performance of competitive and cooperative multi-path routing schemes and the impact of the routing metric (cost) on the difference between these two schemes. Finally, building upon a previously proposed optimization benchmark, we propose an Energy constrained QoS routing scheme for Wireless Sensor Networks and show through simulation that our scheme outperforms the benchmark scheme.
Description
Thesis (MSc (Mathematical Sciences. Computer Science))--University of Stellenbosch, 2007.
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