An Efficient Topology Update Protocol for Dynamic Networks

Topology update is a major component in routing protocols operating in existing communication networks. This paper presents a new efficient topology update protocol that works in dynamic networks that may never stabilize. Our protocol does not use unbounded counters and has O(m) amortized message complexity per topological change, where m is the number of edges. The protocol is very simple and is based on a “hop counter” technique. Our protocol uses a novel technique that combines a dynamic protocol (that works under the assumption that the network never stabilizes) and an eventually stable protocol (that works under the assumption that the network stabilizes).