Optimizing IGP link costs for improving IP-level resilience

Recently, major vendors have introduced new router platforms to the market that support fast IP-level failure protection out of the box. The implementations are based on the IP Fast ReRoute-Loop Free Alternates (LFA) standard. LFA is simple, unobtrusive, and easily deployable. This simplicity, however, comes at a severe price, in that LFA usually cannot protect all possible failure scenarios. In this paper, we give new graph theoretical tools for analyzing LFA failure case coverage and we seek ways for improvement. In particular, we investigate how to optimize IGP link costs to maximize the number of protected failure scenarios, we show that this problem is NP-complete even in a very restricted formulation, and we give exact and approximate algorithms to solve it. Our simulation studies show that a deliberate selection of IGP costs can bring many networks close to complete LFA-based protection.

[1]  Ross W. Callon,et al.  Use of OSI IS-IS for routing in TCP/IP and dual environments , 1990, RFC.

[2]  Geir Dahl,et al.  A Cutting Plane Algorithm for Multicommodity Survivable Network Design Problems , 1998, INFORMS J. Comput..

[3]  Edith Cohen,et al.  Making intra-domain routing robust to changing and uncertain traffic demands: understanding fundamental tradeoffs , 2003, SIGCOMM '03.

[4]  Jeff Tantsura,et al.  IP Fast Re-Route with Fast Notification , 2012 .

[5]  Chen-Nee Chuah,et al.  Failure Inferencing Based Fast Rerouting for Handling Transient Link and Node Failures , 2005, Proceedings IEEE INFOCOM 2006. 25TH IEEE International Conference on Computer Communications.

[6]  Gábor Rétvári,et al.  IP Fast ReRoute: Lightweight Not-Via without Additional Addresses , 2009, IEEE INFOCOM 2009.

[7]  Michael Menth,et al.  Routing Optimization with IP Fast Reroute , 2010 .

[8]  Gábor Rétvári,et al.  On the Representability of Arbitrary Path Sets as Shortest Paths: Theory, Algorithms, and Complexity , 2004, NETWORKING.

[9]  John Moy,et al.  OSPF Version 2 , 1998, RFC.

[10]  Gábor Rétvári,et al.  Optimizing IGP link costs for improving IP-level resilience with Loop-Free Alternates , 2013, Comput. Commun..

[11]  Olivier Bonaventure,et al.  Achieving sub-second IGP convergence in large IP networks , 2005, CCRV.

[12]  Ibrahim Hokelek.  Loop-Free IP Fast Reroute Using Local and Remote LFAPs , 2008 .

[13]  Gábor Rétvári,et al.  IP fast ReRoute: Loop Free Alternates revisited , 2011, 2011 Proceedings IEEE INFOCOM.

[14]  Deep Medhi,et al.  Routing, flow, and capacity design in communication and computer networks , 2004 .

[15]  Xiaowei Yang,et al.  On improving the efficiency and manageability of NotVia , 2007, CoNEXT '07.

[16]  A. Kirstadter,et al.  Improving the resilience in IP networks , 2003, Workshop on High Performance Switching and Routing, 2003, HPSR..

[17]  Mikkel Thorup,et al.  Avoiding Ties in Shortest Path First Routing , 2003 .

[18]  Tibor Cinkler,et al.  A Novel Loop-Free IP Fast Reroute Algorithm , 2007, EUNICE.

[19]  Stewart Bryant,et al.  IP Fast Reroute Using Not-via Addresses , 2006 .

[20]  Stewart Bryant,et al.  IP Fast Reroute Framework , 2010, RFC.

[21]  S. Gjessing,et al.  Multiple Routing Configurations for Fast IP Network Recovery , 2009, IEEE/ACM Transactions on Networking.

[22]  Alia Atlas,et al.  Basic Specification for IP Fast Reroute: Loop-Free Alternates , 2008, RFC.

[23]  Christophe Diot,et al.  An approach to alleviate link overload as observed on an IP backbone , 2003, IEEE INFOCOM 2003. Twenty-second Annual Joint Conference of the IEEE Computer and Communications Societies (IEEE Cat. No.03CH37428).

[24]  Yves Deville,et al.  Implementation of a traffic engineering technique that preserves IP Fast Reroute inCOMET , 2009 .

[25]  Ravindra K. Ahuja,et al.  Network Flows: Theory, Algorithms, and Applications , 1993 .

[26]  Michael Menth,et al.  Loop-free alternates and not-via addresses: A proper combination for IP fast reroute? , 2010, Comput. Networks.

[27]  Matthew Roughan,et al.  The Internet Topology Zoo , 2011, IEEE Journal on Selected Areas in Communications.

[28]  Chen-Nee Chuah,et al.  Proactive vs reactive approaches to failure resilient routing , 2004, IEEE INFOCOM 2004.

[29]  Alia Atlas,et al.  Fast Reroute Extensions to RSVP-TE for LSP Tunnels , 2005, RFC.

[30]  Minas Gjoka,et al.  Evaluation of IP Fast Reroute Proposals , 2007, 2007 2nd International Conference on Communication Systems Software and Middleware.

[31]  Zhi-Li Zhang,et al.  On the Feasibility and Efficacy of Protection Routing in IP Networks , 2010, IEEE/ACM Transactions on Networking.

[32]  Chen-Nee Chuah,et al.  Characterization of Failures in an Operational IP Backbone Network , 2008, IEEE/ACM Transactions on Networking.

[33]  Xiaowei Yang,et al.  SafeGuard: safe forwarding during route changes , 2009, CoNEXT '09.

[34]  Loa Andersson,et al.  Avoiding Equal Cost Multipath Treatment in MPLS Networks , 2007, RFC.

[35]  Ratul Mahajan,et al.  Inferring link weights using end-to-end measurements , 2002, IMW '02.

[36]  Thomas Magedanz,et al.  Topology Requirements for Resilient IP Networks , 2004, MMB.

[37]  Olivier Bonaventure,et al.  An evaluation of IP-based fast reroute techniques , 2005, CoNEXT '05.

[38]  Mikkel Thorup,et al.  Traffic engineering with traditional IP routing protocols , 2002, IEEE Commun. Mag..

[39]  Clarence Filsfils,et al.  LFA applicability in SP networks , 2012 .

[40]  Hammerhead Systems.  Fast Reroute Extensions to RSVP-TE for LSP Tunnels , 2005 .

[41]  Stewart Bryant,et al.  IP Fast Reroute using tunnels , 2007 .