Evaluation of algorithms for multipath route selection over the Internet

Abstract

Resilience as well as other objectives like censorship-resistance demand the existence of multiple diverse paths between two hosts on the Internet. On Internet level, this requires the use of an overlay approach. In this paper, we study this problem on the basis of a data set obtained from traces between Internet hosts on PlanetLab. We study a variety of path selection algorithms, including adapted versions of Suurballe's algorithm. We find that these can outperform the single-hop relay approach that is more commonly proposed for Internet multipath. Our analysis framework imports traceroute data and it generates graph representations of the overlay and the underlay. We can reduce the granularity of information that the algorithms can access. Topology-aware algorithms like Suurballe profit from better information. We also support a variety of evaluation metrics.