Quality-of-service (QoS) routing satisfiesapplication performance requirements and optimizes network resource usage but effective path-selection schemes require the distribution of link-state information, which can impose a significant burden on the bandwidth and processing resources in the network. We investigate the fundamental trade-off between network overheads and the quality of routing decisions in the context of the source-directed linkstate routing protocols proposed for future IP and ATM networks. Throughextensivesimulation experimentswith several representative network topologies and traffic patterns, we uncoverthe effects of stale link-state information, random fluctuations in traffic load, and variations of the link-cost metric on the routing and signalling overheads. The paperconcludesby summarizing our keyresults as a list of guidelines for designing efficient quality-of-service routing policies in large backbone networks.
Anees Shaikh, Jennifer Rexford, Kang G. Shin