A STRATEGY OF DESIGNING ROUTING ALGORITHMS BASED ON IDEAL ROUTINGS

Abstract

This paper proposes a strategy of designing routing algorithms for connectionless packet-switched networks. This strategy consists of three design elements as follows: [A] the notion of ideal routings is introduced to provide the upper performance limits attained by improving routing algorithm and it serves as a standard to measure the performance of other algorithms; [B] a method of constructing simple algorithms is presented under implementation conditions from ideal routings; [C] a method is described to enhance the performance limits of [A]. By using these elements, simple algorithms with a maximum degree of performance attainment are realized. By "degree of performance attainment", we mean that we can see how much room is left for the improvement of algorithms. We develop [A] and [B] with the performance measures of throughput and average packet delay and the M/M/1 queuing network. We decide ideal static routings and their performance limits from [A]. We obtain a new simple algorithm from [B] based on the notion of the ideal routings in implementation conditions. The designed algorithm improves the throughput and the average delay, which are comparable to those from ideal static routings. This improvement is contrasted to the adaptive and distributed OSPF (Open Shortest Path First), a standard Internet routing protocol.