Adaptive load distribution over multipath in MPLS networks

Abstract

The emergence of MultiProtocol Label Switching (MPLS) with its efficient support of explicit routing provides basic mechanisms for facilitating traffic engineering. Exploiting this capability of MPLS, we propose an adaptive multipath traffic engineering mechanism named LDM(Load Distribution over Multipath). The main goal of LDM is to enhance the network utilization as well as the network performance by adaptively splitting traffic load among multiple paths. LDM takes a pure dynamic approach not requiring any a priori traffic load statistics. Routing decisions are made at the flow level, and traffic proportioning reflects both the length and the load of a path. LDM also dynamically selects a few good Label Switched Paths (LSPs) according to the state of the entire network. We use simulation to compare the performance of LDM with the performance of several representative dynamic load distribution approaches as well as the traditional static shortest path only routing. The numerical results show that LDM outperforms the compared approaches in both the blocking ratio as well as the performance of the accepted traffic flows.