Limitations and Possibilities of Path Trading between Autonomous Systems

Abstract—When forwarding packets in the Internet, Autonomous Systems (ASes) frequently choose the shortest path in their network to the next-hop AS in the BGP path, a strategy known as hot-potato routing. As a result, paths in the Internet are suboptimal from a global perspective. For peering ASes who exchange traffic without payments, path trading – complementary deviations from hot-potato routing – appears to be a desirable solution to deal with these inefficiencies. In recent years, path trading approaches have been suggested as means for interdomain traffic engineering between neighboring ASes, as well as between multiple ASes to achieve global efficiency. Surprisingly, little is known on the computational complexity of finding path trading solutions, or the conditions which guarantee the optimality or even approximability of a path trading protocol. In this paper we explore the computational feasibility of computing path trading solutions between ASes. We first show th...

• Type: Journal
• Year: 2010
• Where: INFOCOM
• Authors: Yuval Shavitt, Yaron Singer
• Keywords: ASes, Communications, INFOCOM 2010, Path Trading, Path Trading Solutions