PROM: A persistent routing optimization method based on supervised learning

Traditional Traffic Engineering (TE) typically improves network performance by formulating and solving routing optimization problems based on measured or predicted Traffic Matrices (TMs). However, since network traffic is dynamic, routing strategies optimized for the current measured TMs may not be suitable for future traffic patterns. To adapt to dynamic traffic, one possible solution is to perform more frequent routing updates, but this may lead to service disruptions. Another approach is the two-step method of prediction followed by optimization, which could lead to degraded performance of routing strategies due to inaccuracies in traffic prediction. Additionally, existing approaches focus solely on either distributed or centralized networks, lacking flexibility to adapt to different network architectures. To address these challenges, we propose PROM, a Machine Learning (ML)-based routing optimization model that directly predicts an effective routing strategy in an end-to-end manner based on historical traffic. This routing strategy is applicable across multiple future TMs, thereby reducing the need for frequent routing updates. Furthermore, PROM can be easily extended from a centralized implementation to a distributed one, adapting to different network architectures. To enhance model performance, we have also designed a custom loss function for routing optimization scenarios to avoid overfitting. Extensive simulation results demonstrate that PROM can predict high-quality routing strategies in future unknown traffic scenarios and is adaptable to both centralized and distributed network architectures.