Traffic Engineering with AIMD in MPLS Networks

Abstract

We consider the problem of allocating bandwidth to competing flows in an MPLS network, subject to constraints on fairness, efficiency, and administrative complexity. The aggregate traffic between a source and a destination, called a flow, is mapped to label switched paths (LSPs) across the network. Each flow is assigned a preferred ('primary') LSP, but traffic may be sent to other ('secondary') LSPs. Within this context, we define objectives for traffic engineering, such as fairness, efficiency, and preferred flow assignment to the primary LSP of a flow ('Primary Path First', PPF). We propose a distributed, feedback-based multipath routing algorithm that attempts to apply additive-increase and multiplicative-decrease (AIMD) to implement our traffic engineering objectives. The new algorithm is referred to as multipath-AIMD. We use ns-2 simulations to illustrate the fairness criteria and PPF property of our multipath-AIMD scheme in an MPLS network.