On QoS routing and path establishment in the presence of imprecise state information

Abstract

In large networks, maintaining precise global network state information is impossible. The imprecise network state information has significant impacts on Quality-of-Service (QoS) routing and path establishment. In this paper, we develop analytical models for investigating the QoS routing schemes that are designed to tolerate imprecise network state information, and study the performance of various QoS routing schemes, including randomized routing, multi-path routing, and probability based routing, using both the models and simulations. We further propose a new mechanism, called local rerouting, that improves the effectiveness of QoS path establishment in the presence of imprecise global net- work state information. Local rerouting is orthogonal to existing schemes for dealing with imprecise state information and can be used in conjunction with them to alleviate the impacts of the im- precise information. The results of our performance study indicate that local rerouting is robust and effective.