Improving internet-wide routing protocols convergence with MRPC timers

The behavior of routing protocols during convergence is critical as it impacts end-to-end performance. Network convergence is particularly important in BGP, the current interdomain routing protocol. In order to decrease the amount of exchanged routing messages and transient routes, BGP routers rely on MRAI timers and route flap damping. These timers are intended to limit the exchange of transient routing messages. In practice, these timers have been shown to be partly ineffective at improving convergence, making it even slower in some situations. In this paper, we propose to add a timer mechanism to routing protocols, that enforces an ordering of the routing messages such that path exploration is drastically reduced while controlling convergence time. Our approach is based on known results in generalized path algorithms and endomorphism semi-rings. Our timers, called MRPC (metrics and routing policies compliant), are set independently by each router and depend only on the metrics of t...

• Type: Conference
• Year: 2009
• Where: CONEXT
• Authors: Anthony J. Lambert, Marc-Olivier Buob, Steve Uhlig
• Keywords: Computer Networks, CONEXT 2009, Path Exploration, Routing, Routing Protocols