Prefix Routing Schemes in Dynamic Networks

Abstract We study a routing scheme on dynamic networks called the Prefix Routing scheme. The scheme is an abstraction of source routing. It assigns fixed addresses to the nodes of the network and one label per link. A message is routed by sending it out via the link with the maximum length (i.e., the “longest”) label that is a prefix of the address of the destination node. Arbitrary insertions of links and nodes are feasible with constant adaptation cost. It is shown that any dynamic growing network can be assigned a valid Prefix Routing scheme. We characterize completely the types of fixed networks with dynamic links (i.e., networks in which only the cost of the links can vary over time) and of dynamic networks with arbitrary insertions and deletions of nodes and links (without disconnecting the network) that allow optimum routing in this scheme. A hierarchy of so-called multi-label Prefix Routing schemes is presented. The connections between Prefix Routing and static Interval Routing are presented.