To accommodate an increasing amount of traffic efficiently, elastic optical networks (EON) that can use optical spectrum resources flexibly have been studied. We implement multi-path routing in case we cannot allocate the spectrum with single-path routing. However, multi-path routing requires more guard bands to avoid interference between two adjacent optical paths when compared with single-path routing in EON. A multi-path routing algorithm with traffic grooming technology has been proposed. The researchers assumed that a uniform modulation level was adopted, and so they did not consider the impact of path length on the resources needed. In this paper, we propose a multi-path routing method with traffic grooming considering path lengths. Our proposed method establishes an optical multi-path considering path length, fiber utilization, and the use of traffic grooming. Simulations show we can decrease the call-blocking probability by approximately 24.8% in NSFNET. We also demonstrate the effectiveness of traffic grooming and the improvement in the utilization ratio of optical spectrum resources.

Stability-featured dynamic multi-path routing (SDMR) based on the existing Traffic engineering eXplicit Control Protocol (TeXCP) is proposed and evaluated for traffic engineering in terrestrial networks. SDMR abandons the sophisticated stability maintenance mechanisms of TeXCP, whose load balancing scheme is also modified in the proposed mechanism. SDMR is proved to be able to converge to a unique equilibria state, which has been corroborated by the simulations.

In recent years, the time variation of Internet traffic has increased due to the growth of streaming and cloud services. Backbone networks must accommodate such traffic without congestion. Traffic engineering with traffic prediction is one approach to stably accommodating time-varying traffic. In this approach, routes are calculated from predicted traffic to avoid congestion, but predictions may include errors that cause congestion. We propose prediction-based traffic engineering that is robust against prediction errors. To achieve robust control, our method uses model predictive control, a process control method based on prediction of system dynamics. Routes are calculated so that future congestion is avoided without sudden route changes. We apply calculated routes for the next time slot, and observe traffic. Using the newly observed traffic, we again predict traffic and re-calculate the routes. Repeating these steps mitigates the impact of prediction errors, because traffic predictions are corrected in each time slot. Through simulations using backbone network traffic traces, we demonstrate that our method can avoid the congestion that the other methods cannot.

We present a new multi-path routing methodology, MLB-routing, that is based on the multinomial logit model, which is well known in the random utility field. The key concept of the study is to set multiple paths from the origin to the destination, and distribute packets in accordance with multinomial logit type probability. Since MLB-routing is pure multi-path routing, it reduces the convergence on some links and increases bandwidth utilization in the network. Unlike existing multi-path routing schemes, which pre-set alternate paths, the proposed method can dynamically distribute packets to every possible path and thus is more efficient. Furthermore, it should be mentioned that this methodology can be implemented as either a link-state protocol or a distance-vector protocol. Therefore, it well supports the existing Internet. Simulations show that this methodology raises network utilization and significantly reduces end-to-end delay and jitter.

In this paper, we propose Split Multi-path Routing protocol with Load Balancing policy (SMR-LB) to improve TCP performance in mobile ad hoc networks. In SMR-LB, each intermediate node records how many primary paths are attempted to construct as well as which source nodes attempt to construct the primary path. Each intermediate node decides which primary path should be constructed by using the primary path and the source node ID information. As a result, SMR-LB can balance the loads and so reduce the probability of congestion and avoid the continuous link breakage time between the specific source and destination pair. Computer simulation results show that SMR-LB can improve TCP performance compared with the conventional protocols.