Resilient Routing Table Computation Based on Connectivity Preserving Graph Sequences

Abstract

Fast reroute (FRR) mechanisms that can instantly handle network failures in the data plane are gaining attention in packet-switched networks. In FRR no notification messages are required as the nodes adjacent to the failure are prepared with a routing table such that the packets are re-routed only based on local information. However, designing the routing algorithm for FRR is challenging because the number of possible sets of failed network links and nodes can be extremely high, while the algorithm should keep track of which nodes are aware of the failure. In this paper, we propose a generic algorithmic framework that combines the benefits of Integer Linear Programming (ILP) and an effective approach from graph theory related to constructive graph characterization of k-connected graphs, i.e., edge splitting-off. We illustrate these benefits through arborescence design for FRR and show that (i) due to the ILP we have great flexibility in defining the routing problem, while (ii) the problem can still be solved very fast. We demonstrate through simulations that our framework outperforms state-of-the-art FRR mechanisms and provides better resilience with shorter paths in the arborescences.