Analysis of multi-path routing

Abstract

In connection-oriented networks, resource reservations must be made before data can be sent along a route. For short or bursty connections, a selected route must have the required resources to ensure appropriate communication with regard to desired quality-of-service (QoS). For example, in ATM networks, the route setup process considers only links with sufficient resources and reserves these resources while it advances toward the destination. The same concern for QoS routing appears in datagram networks such as the Internet, when applications with QoS requirements need to reserve resources along pinned routes. In this paper, we analyze the performance of multi-path routing algorithms and compare them to single-path reservation that might be persistent, i.e., retry after a failure. The analysis assumes that the routing process reserves resources while it advances toward the destination, thus there is a penalty associated with a reservation that cannot be used. Our analysis shows that while multi-path reservation algorithms perform comparably to single-path reservation algorithms, either persistent or not, the connection-establishment time for multi-path reservation is significantly lower. Thus, multi-path reservation becomes an attractive alternative for interactive applications such as World Wide Web browsing.