Comparative Analysis of Routing Metrics for Network Communication

This article contributes the comprehensive evaluation of routing metrics. Usually, rich quality link facilitates efficient response even with more number of hop-counts rather to a poor quality link that has smaller number of hop-counts. Hop-counts metric is preferably used in routing functions due to its simplicity and stability. No other routing metric persists with these two capabilities. But the question is that whether this metric always gives accurate and optimal outcomes? Can this metric alone be employed to get optimal performance? We made an effort to examine several routing metrics under several technical parameters such as load sensitivity, load balancing, packet loss ratio, packet rate, packet size, isotonic property, link quality, inter-flow and intra-flow interface etc. We analyzed which of the selected routing metrics provides optimal routing services with optimal performance? Moreover, to predict, when hop-count metric gives best performance in the presence of what kinds of prominent technical parameters? Our research effort is inspired by prior studies related to hop-count and bandwidth approximation practices in routing applications.