Stable load control with load prediction in multipath packet forwarding

Abstract

With the invention of multiprotocol label switching (MPLS), complex traffic engineering and multipath packet forwarding has become a reality. To use multipath packet forwarding, efficient load control between paths is necessary. Furthermore, dynamic load control is needed to optimize load mapping between paths depending on the network state. Unfortunately, distributed dynamic load control algorithms, if not carefully designed, can make the load mapping unstable, thus making many packets dropped due to unbalanced mapping. We propose a dynamic load control scheme which makes the network efficient while keeping load mapping stable.