A Hybrid Approach to Header Size and Forwarding Table Optimization in Segment Routing

Abstract

Segment Routing is a source routing paradigm that simplifies packet forwarding and management across networks. Two major challenges of segment routing are the limitation of header stack size and the size of the Forwarding Table specific to each node. It has been observed that there is a trade-off between these two factors. In this letter, we have addressed this trade-off and presented a mechanism to minimize the stack size as well as the forwarding table. Instead of individual Segment IDs used in traditional segment routing, unique Path IDs are considered. This reduces the size of the header stack to one irrespective of the number of segments in the path. To reduce the size of the forwarding table, a forwarding technique based on matrix operations is used. Our approach also works on the reliability issues in forwarding and guarantees 100% successful packet forwarding.