Hybrid IGP+MPLS Routing in Next Generation IP Networks: An Online Traffic Engineering Model

Abstract

Hybrid routing approaches which either combine the best of traditional IGP and MPLS routing or allow a smooth migration from traditional IGP routing to the newly proposed MPLS standard have scarcely been addressed by the IP community. This paper presents an on-line traffic engineering (TE) model which uses a hybrid routing approach to achieve efficient routing of flows in IP networks. The model assumes a network-design process where the IP flows are classified at the ingress of the network and handled differently into the core using a multiple metric routing mechanism leading to the logical separation of a physical network into two virtual networks: An IGP network carrying low bandwidth demanding (LBD) flows and an MPLS network where bandwidth-guaranteed tunnels are setup to route high bandwidth demanding (HBD) flows. The hybrid routing approach uses a route optimization model where (1) link weight optimization (LWO) is implemented in the IGP network to move the IP flows away from links that provide a high probability to become bottleneck for traffic engineering and (2) the MPLS network is engineered to minimize the interference among competing flows and route the traffic away from heavily loaded links. We show that a cost-based optimization framework can be used by an ISP to design simple and flexible routing approaches where different metrics reflecting the ISP’s view of its TE objectives are deployed to improve the use and efficiency of a network. This is achieved through extensions to a mixed cost metric derived from the route optimization model. The IGP+MPLS routing approach is applied to compute paths for the traffic offered to a 15- and 50-node network. Preliminary simulation reveals performance improvements compared to both IGP and MPLS routing in terms of the routing optimality and the network reliability.