Virtual Routing Research Articles

A new algorithm based on auxiliary virtual topology for sub-path protection in WDM optical networks

This paper proposes a new survivable algorithm named sub-path protection based on auxiliary virtual topology (SPAVT) to tolerate the single-link failure in WDM optical networks. First, according to the protection-switching time constraint, SPAVT searches multiple pairs of primary and backup paths for each node pair in the network by the off-line manner, and then map these paths to the virtual topology. When a connection request arrives, SPAVT only needs to run one time of the Dijkstra’s algorithm to search a virtual route in virtual topology, where the route may consist of multiple pairs of sub-paths, to meet the protection-switching time constraint. Then, according to the shared resources policy, SPAVT chooses an optimal pair of sub-paths. Simulation results show that SPAVT has smaller blocking probability and lower time complexity than conventional algorithms.

Virtual routers on the move

The complexity of network management is widely recognized as one of the biggest challenges facing the Internet today. Point solutions for individual problems further increase system complexity while not addressing the underlying causes. In this paper, we argue that many network-management problems stem from the same root cause---the need to maintain consistency between the physical and logical configuration of the routers. Hence, we propose VROOM (Virtual ROuters On the Move), a new network-management primitive that avoids unnecessary changes to the logical topology by allowing (virtual) routers to freely move from one physical node to another. In addition to simplifying existing network-management tasks like planned maintenance and service deployment, VROOM can also help tackle emerging challenges such as reducing energy consumption. We present the design, implementation, and evaluation of novel migration techniques for virtual routers with either hardware or software data planes. Our evaluation shows that VROOM is transparent to routing protocols and results in no performance impact on the data traffic when a hardware-based data plane is used.

Technology-Driven, Highly-Scalable Dragonfly Topology

Evolving technology and increasing pin-bandwidth motivate the use of high-radix routers to reduce the diameter, latency, and cost of interconnection networks. High-radix networks, however, require longer cables than their low-radix counterparts. Because cables dominate network cost, the number of cables, and particularly the number of long, global cables should be minimized to realize an efficient network. In this paper, we introduce the dragonfly topology which uses a group of high-radix routers as a virtual router to increase the effective radix of the network. With this organization, each minimally routed packet traverses at most one global channel. By reducing global channels, a dragonfly reduces cost by 20% compared to a flattened butterfly and by 52% compared to a folded Clos network in configurations with ≥ 16K nodes.We also introduce two new variants of global adaptive routing that enable load-balanced routing in the dragonfly. Each router in a dragonfly must make an adaptive routing decision based on the state of a global channel connected to a different router. Because of the indirect nature of this routing decision, conventional adaptive routing algorithms give degraded performance. We introduce the use of selective virtual-channel discrimination and the use of credit round-trip latency to both sense and signal channel congestion. The combination of these two methods gives throughput and latency that approaches that of an ideal adaptive routing algorithm.

Policy-based BGP-control architecture for inter-AS routing adjustment

Unexpected temporal and spatial changes of interdomain routing paths often lead to the necessity of on-demand routing adjustment among independently managed ASs. For resolving this problem, we have developed a BGP-control architecture called Virtual Router (VR) for controlling conventional BGP routers from outside without any protocol extensions. The VR combined with a multi-agent system (MAS) can be applied for the inter-AS routing adjustment for transit ISPs and their customer ASs. This architecture makes incremental deployment possible. The VR controls interdomain routing by dynamically changing forwarding paths among alternative BGP entries in multiple border routers. Each agent, which interprets a policy description for acquiring and analyzing network status, exchanges interdomain routing adjustment preferences when an adjustment is required, and coordinates where and how to change routing on the basis of feedback. Evaluation results indicate the validity and effectiveness of the basic design of our system in some control scenarios, where an AS tries to balance inbound traffic flowing via neighboring BGP peers.

CHEETAH virtual label switching router for dynamic provisioning in IP optical networks

Enabling new IP-based services such as triple and quad-play, as well as eScience applications at predetermined quality of service (QoS) measures, require the provisioning of guaranteed bandwidth pipes at varying granularities (e.g. from few Mbps to several Gbps and above). Dynamic provisioning of bandwidth pipes, whereby a connection is dynamically setup and released upon signalling, is a cost-effective method of enabling such services. Dynamic provisioning is a new paradigm in network control and management (NC&M) that requires the introduction of control plane (i.e. routing and signaling) capabilities within network elements such as routers, layer 2 switches and layer 1 cross-connects. In this paper we share our experience in the design and deployment of a Generalized Multiple Protocol Label Switching (GMPLS) control plane for layer 2 switches in the experimental Circuit-Switched High-Speed End-to-End Transport Architecture (CHEETAH). We call this software engine CHEETAH Virtual Label Switching Router (CVLSR). CVLSR allows non-GMPLS devices (e.g. Ethernet switches, routers and other cross-connects) to participate in the dynamic provisioning of end-to-end bandwidth-guaranteed connections. It extends the dynamic provisioning of connections to the end-users across different administrative domains. We have successfully deployed the CVLSR in CHEETAH optical network across HOPI/DRAGON network. The interoperability of the CVLSR with commercial GMPLS SONET-based cross-connect switches has been demonstrated.

A virtual link routing scheme in the wireless home network architecture supporting end-to-end seamless connectivity

This paper presents a communication framework for end-to-end seamless connectivity improvement in IEEE802.11-based wireless home networks. The proposed communication framework incorporates the foll...

Minimizing Intermediate Multicast routing for dynamic multi-hop ad hoc networks

A Minimizing Intermediate Multicast Routing protocol (MIMR) is proposed for dynamic multi-hop ad hoc networks. In MIMR, multicast sessions are created and released only by source nodes. In each multicast session process, the source node keeps a list of intermediate nodes and destinations, which is encapsulated into the packet header when the source node sends a multicast packet. Nodes receiving multicast packets decide to accept or forward the packet according to the list. Depending on topology matrix maintained by unicast routing, the shortest virtual hierarchy routing tree is constructed by improved Dijkstra algorithm. MIMR can achieve the minimum number of intermediate nodes, which are computed through the tree. No control packet is transmitted in the process of multicast session. Load of the network is largely decreased. Experimental result shows that MIMR is flexible and robust for dynamic ad hoc networks.

Service Virtualization for Border Model Based Multi-Layer Service Network Architecture

The rapidly increasing bandwidth requirements of IP traffic mean that networks based on optical technologies in conjunction with IP routing technologies will provide the backbone of the next generation Internet. One of the major issues is how to construct an optical-technology-based backbone network that offers the economical transport of large-scale IP/MPLS services while achieving reliable, robust network. The key to achieving this objective lies in multilayer coordination technologies using Multi-Layer Service Network [MLSN] Architecture, that we previously proposed [2]. One of the important aspects of MLSN architecture is ability to effectively use GMPLS network resources by IP/MPLS networks. We propose extensions to previously proposed MLSN architecture. The proposed extensions to MLSN architecture are tailored to address service virtualization and of various networks over GMPLS backbone. As a part of this extended MLSN architecture, we introduce novel concepts known as Logical Router (LR) and Virtual Router (VR) that would enable border router to be services domain router, so that it can connect multiple networks such as L2VPN, L3VPN etc., over GMPLS backbone by offering separation or virtualization. This separation/isolation greatly enhances the reliability of next generation networks, as any failure on one should be isolated from others. We evaluate our extended network architecture against requirements for the large scale network targeting at introducing such new technology to cope with vast traffic explosion and challenges in operation and provision sophistication.

Design and Performance Evaluation of Queue-and-Rate-Adjustment Dynamic Load Balancing Policies for Distributed Networks

In this paper, we classify the dynamic distributed load balancing algorithms for heterogenous distributed computer systems into three policies: queue adjustment policy (QAP), rate adjustment policy (RAP), and queue and rate adjustment policy (QRAP). We propose two efficient algorithms, referred to as rate-based load balancing via virtual routing (RLBVR) and queue-based load balancing via virtual routing (QLBVR), which belong to the above RAP and QRAP policies, respectively. We also consider algorithms estimated load information scheduling algorithm (ELISA) and perfect information algorithm, which were introduced in the literature, to implement QAP policy. Our focus is to analyze and understand the behaviors of these algorithms in terms of their load balancing abilities under varying load conditions (light, moderate, or high) and the minimization of the mean response time of jobs. We compare the above classes of algorithms by a number of rigorous simulation experiments to elicit their behaviors under some influencing parameters, such as load on the system and status exchange intervals. We also extend our experimental verification to large scale cluster systems such as a mesh architecture, which is widely used in real-life situations. From these experiments, recommendations are drawn to prescribe the suitability of the algorithms under various situations

Virtual source-based minimum interference path multicast routing in optical virtual private networks

A major concern in optical burst-switched (OBS) networks is contention, which occurs when more than one bursts contend for the same data channel at the same time. Due to the bufferless nature of OBS networks, these contentions randomly occur at any degree of congestion in the network. When contention occurs at any core node, the core node drops bursts according to its dropping policy. Burst loss in OBS networks significantly degrades the throughput of TCP sources in the local access networks because current TCP congestion control mechanisms perform a slow start phase mainly due to contention rather than heavy congestion. However, there has not been much study about the impact of burst loss on the performance of TCP over OBS networks. To improve TCP throughput over OBS networks, we first introduce a dropping policy with burst retransmission that retransmits the bursts dropped due to contention, at the ingress node. Then, we extend the dropping policy with burst retransmission to drop a burst that has experienced fewer retransmissions in the event of contention at a core node in order to reduce the number of events that a TCP source enters the slow start phase due to contention. In addition, we propose to limit the number of retransmissions of each burst to prevent severe congestion. For the performance evaluation of the proposed schemes, we provide an analytic throughput model of TCP over OBS networks. Through simulations as well as analytic modeling, it is shown that the proposed dropping policy with burst retransmission can improve TCP throughput over OBS networks compared with an existing dropping policy without burst retransmission.

Distributed scheduling strategy for divisible loads on arbitrarily configured distributed networks using load balancing via virtual routing

In this paper, we consider a scheduling problem for divisible loads originating from single or multiple sites on arbitrary networks. We first propose a generalized mathematical model and formulate the scheduling problem as an optimization problem with an objective to minimize the processing time of the loads. We derive a number of theoretical results on the solution of the optimization problem. On the basis of these first set of results, we propose an efficient algorithm for scheduling divisible loads using the concept of load balancing via virtual routing for an arbitrary network configuration. The proposed algorithm has three major attractive features. Firstly, the algorithm is simple to realize and can be implemented in a distributed fashion. The second one is in its style of working by avoiding the need for generating a timing diagram explicitly for any complex networks having an arbitrary network topology. The last one is its capability of handling divisible loads originating from both single and multiple sites. When divisible loads originate from a single node, we compare the proposed algorithm with a recently proposed RAOLD algorithm which is based on minimum cost spanning tree [J. Yao, V. Bharadwaj, Design and performance analysis of divisible load scheduling strategies on arbitrary graphs, Cluster Computing 7(2) (2004) 191–207]. When divisible loads originate from multiple sites, we test the performance on sparse, medium and densely connected networks. This is the first time in the divisible load theory (DLT) literature that such a generic approach for handling divisible loads originating from multiple sites on arbitrary networks employing load balancing via virtual routing is attempted.

Reliable Routing in Wireless Ad Hoc Networks: The Virtual Routing Protocol

A novel routing protocol for wireless, mobile ad hoc networks is presented. This protocol incorporates features that enhance routing reliability, defined as the ability to provide almost 100% packet delivery rate. The protocol is based on a virtual structure, unrelated to the physical network topology, where mobile nodes are connected by virtual links and are responsible for keeping physical routes to their neighbors in the virtual structure. Routes between pairs of mobiles are set up by using information to translate virtual paths discovered in the virtual structure. Route discovery and maintenance phases of the protocol are based on unicast messages travelling across virtual paths, with sporadic use of flooding protocol. Most flooding is executed in the background using low priority messages. The routing protocol has been evaluated and compared with the Dynamic Source Routing protocol and with the Zone Routing Protocol by means of simulation.

Lower Bounds for On-line Graph Problems with Application to On-line Circuit and Optical Routing

We present lower bounds on the competitive ratio of randomized algorithms for a wide class of on-line graph optimization problems, and we apply such results to on-line virtual circuit and optical routing problems. Lund and Yannakakis [The approximation of maximum subgraph problems, in Proceedings of the 20th International Colloquium on Automata, Languages and Programming, 1993, pp. 40-51] give inapproximability results for the problem of finding the largest vertex induced subgraph satisfying any nontrivial, hereditary property pi--e.g., independent set, planar, acyclic, bipartite. We consider the on-line version of this family of problems, where some graph G is fixed and some subgraph H of G is presented on-line, vertex by vertex. The on-line algorithm must choose a subset of the vertices of H, choosing or rejecting a vertex when it is presented, whose vertex induced subgraph satisfies property pi. Furthermore, we study the on-line version of graph coloring whose off-line version has also been shown to be inapproximable [C. Lund and M. Yannakakis, On the hardness of approximating minimization problems, in Proceedings of the 25th ACM Symposium on Theory of Computing, 1993], on-line max edge-disjoint paths, and on-line path coloring problems. Irrespective of the time complexity, we show an Omega(nepsilon) lower bound on the competitive ratio of randomized on-line algorithms for any of these problems. As a consequence, we obtain an Omega(nepsilon) lower bound on the competitive ratio of randomized on-line algorithms for virtual circuit routing on general networks, in contrast to the known results for some specific networks. Similar lower bounds are obtained for on-line optical routing as well.

Network-based virtual personal overlay networks using programmable virtual routers

This article explores the use and adaptation of well established VPN technologies to dynamically network at run time devices and services in personal networks. Virtual personal overlay networks are envisaged as an extension of the basic VPN concept to network PN nodes in a secure manner. User managed and provider provisioned-based overlays are analyzed in terms of scalability, management complexity, and security to select the most appropriate VPON deployment and management framework. The dynamic nature of PNs calls for highly flexible self-configuring and self-adaptive VPON architectures. Programmable edge routers and dynamic tunneling mechanisms can be combined to meet the requirements set by PNs. The virtual router model is used in the provider edge to ease the dynamic deployment and management of VPONs. Results of an implementation and a performance evaluation of the VR concept based on open software routers are reported.

Serviter: A service-oriented programmable network platform for shared infrastructure

Active Networks propose a new approach for dynamic service deployment through the introduction of extensible software components and per-packet processing in the forwarding plane. By doing so, this approach causes serious degradation to performance, scalability, and reliability levels achievable in current networks. Furthermore, current Active Network architectures cannot guarantee isolation among conflicting services or services competing for limited resources. The focus of this paper is on service isolation and a programmable approach whereby service introduction is restricted to the control plane and per-packet processing is performed by reconfigurable dedicated hardware. In particular, we present Serviter, a Service-Oriented Programmable Network Platform for Shared Networks. Serviter employs separated control and forwarding planes. It enables on-demand service deployment in a partitioned and hardware optimised control plane. It facilitates safe node sharing by providing each trusted user (e.g. an ISP) with a secure, separate, and resource assured partition, representing a ‘virtual router’, to accommodate their services. Serviter employs a new QoS-differentiated allocation mechanism, called Control plane-Quality of Service, to allocate the platform internal resources fairly and efficiently among partitions and their services.

An enhanced approach to determine connected dominating sets for routing in mobile ad hoc networks

A mobile ad hoc network is a collection of wireless mobile nodes forming a temporary network without the support of any established infrastructure or centralised administration. Mobile ad hoc networks face a lot of challenges for designing a scalable routing protocol due to their natural characteristics. The idea of virtual backbone routing has been proposed for efficient routing in mobile ad hoc networks because virtual backbone routing can reduce communication overhead and speed up the routing process compared with many existing routing protocols. Up to now, Minimum Connected Dominating Set (MCDS) is the main method used to form a virtual backbone. However, finding an MCDS is an NP-hard problem. A distributed protocol for calculating the connected dominating set was proposed by Wu and Li. In this paper, we propose a further extension to reduce the size of the dominating set as compared to their method. We conduct extensive simulations on these two related algorithms. These simulation results show that our approach can consistently outperform Wu and Li's method, particularly for a medium-density network. We discuss the tradeoff between cost and performance through theoretical analysis.

A network-based VPN architecture using virtual routing

A network-based Virtual Private Network (VPN) architecture by using fundamental routing mechanism is proposed. This network is a virtual overlay network based on the relay of IP-in-IP tunneling of virtual routing modules. The packet format employs the encapsulation of IPSec ESP (Encapsulating Security Payload), an impact path code and an extended DS (Differentiated Services) code to support multi-path routing and QoS. Comparing with other models of VPN, this network system can be deployed in the current network with little investment, and it is easy to implement. The simulation result shows its performance is better than the traditional VPN system of black box mode.

Layer 2 and 3 virtual private networks: taxonomy, technology, and standardization efforts

Virtual private network services are often classified by the OSI layer at which the VPN service provider's systems interchange VPN reachability information with customer sites. Layer 2 and 3 VPN services are currently being designed and deployed, even as the related standards are being developed. This article describes the wide range of emerging L2 and L3 VPN architectures and technical solutions or approaches, and discusses the status of standards work. Some specific L2VPN and L3VPN technologies described here include virtual private LAN service, transparent LAN service, BGP/MPLS-based VPNs (RFC 2547bis), virtual router, and IPSec VPN approaches. We discuss recent and continuing standards efforts in the IETF 12vpn and 13vpn working groups, and related work in the pseudo-wire emulation edge-to-edge working group, as well as in some other standards fora, and describe some mechanisms that provide membership, reachability, topology, security, and management functions.

Configuring Traffic Grooming VP Ns

A VPλN is an optical virtual private network (oVPN) built of wavelength paths within a multihop wavelength routing (WR) dense wavelength division multiplexing (DWDM) network. An efficient and general graph-theoretic model (the wavelength-graph (WG)) has been proposed along with an integer linear programming (ILP) formulation of setting up VPλNs with given traffic requirements over a given WR-DWDM network with two protection scenarios. Here, we have exploited the advantages of traffic grooming, i.e., numerous traffic streams of a VPN can share a wavelength path. We have also generalized the model for setting up VPNs over a WR-DWDM system where multiple VPNs can share a single wavelength path. The objective of the optimization is in all cases to reduce resource usage at upper (electrical) layers (i.e., to reduce the load of the virtual routers), subject to constrained amount of capacity of each wavelength channel and limited number of wavelengths. Here, we propose and compare three basic methods for configuring oVPNs and investigate various parameter settings.

Design and analysis of a non-preemptive decentralized load balancing algorithm for multi-class jobs in distributed networks

In this paper, we propose a static, decentralized load balancing algorithm for handling multi-class jobs in distributed network system for minimizing the mean response time of a job, using the concept of virtual routing. We formulate the problem as a constrained non-linear minimization problem with job flow-rate, communication delays, and processing delays, as constraints. We employ a novel approach to transform the formulated problem into an equivalent routing problem and propose an algorithm, referred to as load balancing via virtual routing (LBVR), to seek an optimal solution, whenever it exists. We show that the design of the proposed algorithm subsumes several interesting properties and guarantees to deliver a super-linear rate of convergence in obtaining an optimal solution, whenever it exists. Also, when the variation of mean link delays is assumed to be a convex function, we show that the solution generated by our LBVR algorithm is indeed an optimal solution, whereas, when the above variation is assumed to be non-convex, we derive a necessary condition for an optimal solution. With rigorous experiments we test our algorithm in terms of its rate of convergence and quality of solution to quantify its performance. We demonstrate the complete workings of our algorithm using an illustrative example in a systematic fashion, for ease of understanding.