A fractional model of the border gateway protocol (BGP)

The Border Gateway Protocol (BGP) is the interdomain routing protocol used to exchange routing information between Autonomous Systems (ASes) in the internet today. While intradomain routing protocols such as RIP are basically distributed algorithms for solving shortest path problems, the graph theoretic problem that BGP is trying to solve is called the stable paths problem (SPP). Unfortunately, unlike shortest path problems, it has been shown that instances of SPP can fail to have a solution and so BGP can fail to converge. We define a fractional version of SPP and show that all such instances of fractional SPP have solutions. We also show that while these solutions exist they are not necessarily half-integral.

• Type: Conference
• Year: 2008
• Where: SODA
• Authors: Penny E. Haxell, Gordon T. Wilfong
• Keywords: Algorithms, Interdomain Routing Protocol, Routing Protocols, Shortest Path Problems, SODA 2008