Performance Evaluation of a Load Balancing Scheme in MPLS Network

A. Dana, A.K. Zadeh, and M.J. Akhlaghinia (Iran)

Keywords

splitting; quality of service; load balancing; MPLS

Abstract

A traffic engineering problem consists of setting up label switch paths (LSP) between the edge label switch router (LSP) of the network to meet traffic demands while optimizing the network performance. It is Known that total traffic throughput in a network, hence the resource utilization can be maximized if the traffic of main LSP is split over multiple Paths during congestion. However the problem formulation and practical algorithms, which calculate the traffic split ratio taking the route constraints into considerations. In this paper, we propose a technique for reducing multi protocol label switching (MPLS) congestion which is achieved by splitting wide-band LSPs into multiple low-bandwidth subconnection and routing them independently through the network. The essence of the mechanism is to use fragmented network bandwidth for supporting calls, which are otherwise blocked by conventional routing. We provide a detailed packet-level design for the split-scheduling algorithms, which uses a special type of MPLS resource management signaling packet for maintaining packet ordering. The analysis and simulation of the scheduling algorithms show that LSP splitting is capable of delivering acceptable packet-level quality of service (QoS) to forwarding equivalent class (FEC). We also deliver a solution for implementing splitting without requiring any protocol changes within the network. We show that it is sufficient to modify the data and control plane protocols only within the edge LSR. Finally, a set of routing-level simulations for splitting evaluation concerning loss probability as a QoS parameter are given. The LSPs and split ratio are calculated off-line, and passed to MPLS edge routers for explicit LSP set up.

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