Cluster-Fault Tolerant Routing in a Torus

Abstract

The number of Internet-connected devices grows very rapidly, with even fears of running out of available IP addresses. It is clear that the number of sensors follows this trend, thus inducing large sensor networks. It is insightful to make the comparison with the huge number of processors of modern supercomputers. In such large networks, the problem of node faults necessarily arises, with faults often happening in clusters. The tolerance to faults, and especially cluster faults, is thus critical. Furthermore, thanks to its advantageous topological properties, the torus interconnection network has been adopted by the major supercomputer manufacturers of the recent years, thus proving its applicability. Acknowledging and embracing these two technological and industrial aspects, we propose in this paper a node-to-node routing algorithm in an n -dimensional k -ary torus that is tolerant to faults. Not only is this algorithm tolerant to faulty nodes, it also tolerates faulty node clusters. The described algorithm selects a fault-free path of length at most n ( 2 k + ⌊ k / 2 ⌋ − 2 ) with an O ( n 2 k 2 | F | ) worst-case time complexity with F the set of faulty nodes induced by the faulty clusters.