Throughput optimal routing in overlay networks

Maximum throughput requires path diversity enabled by bifurcating traffic at different network nodes. In this work, we consider a network where traffic bifurcation is allowed only at a subset of nodes called routers, while the rest nodes (called forwarders) cannot bifurcate traffic and hence only fo...

Full description

Bibliographic Details
Main Authors: Paschos, Georgios S., Modiano, Eytan H.
Other Authors: Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Aeronautics and Astronautics
Format: Article
Language:en_US
Published: Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) 2015
Online Access:http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/97012
https://orcid.org/0000-0001-8238-8130
Description
Summary:Maximum throughput requires path diversity enabled by bifurcating traffic at different network nodes. In this work, we consider a network where traffic bifurcation is allowed only at a subset of nodes called routers, while the rest nodes (called forwarders) cannot bifurcate traffic and hence only forward packets on specified paths. This implements an overlay network of routers where each overlay link corresponds to a path in the physical network. We study dynamic routing implemented at the overlay. We develop a queue-based policy, which is shown to be maximally stable (throughput optimal) for a restricted class of network scenarios where overlay links do not correspond to overlapping physical paths. Simulation results show that our policy yields better delay over dynamic policies that allow bifurcation at all nodes, such as the backpressure policy. Additionally, we provide a heuristic extension of our proposed overlay routing scheme for the unrestricted class of networks.