Intelligent Route Control and Overlay Routing

Recently, both the networking industry and Internet research communities have shown significant interest in Intelligent Routing Control (IRC) systems. There are two types of IRC systems: routing overlays and intelligent multihoming.

1) IRC systems perform load-sensitive routing, allowing dynamic path changes based on the measured performance of candidate paths.
2) With IRC systems it becomes possible to route different classes of traffic to the same destination through different paths.
3) IRC systems give edge networks the flexibility to choose their path to common destinations.

This project investigates IRC systems from a critical perspective, examining both their potential to improve network routing and application performance, but also the risk that such systems may introduce in the Internet in the form of instability and conflicting routing incentives.

The project's main research tasks are to: investigate both routing overlays and intelligent multihoming and compare the pros and cons of the two architectures; identify the key issues in the design and operation of IRC systems; design algorithms and mechanisms for the stable and efficient operation of IRC Systems; evaluate the previous results through realistic simulations and wide-scale experiments over Planetlab and other testbeds.

Major Publications

• Interactions of Intelligent Route Control with TCP Congestion Control, with R.Gao, D.Blair, M.Morrow and E.W.Zegura. In the Proceedings of the Networking conference, Atlanta, May 2007.
• Path Selection using Available Bandwidth Estimation in Overlay-based Video Streaming, with M.Jain. In the Proceedings of the Networking conference, Atlanta, May 2007.
• Combing Multihoming with Overlay Routing (or how to be a better ISP without owning a ne twork), with Y.Zhu and M.Ammar. In the Proceedings of IEEE INFOCOM. Anchorage, Alaska, May 2007.
• Dynamic Overlay Routing Based on Available Bandwidth Estimation: A Simulation Study, with Y.Zhu and M. Ammar. In the Computer Networks Journal, Volume 50, Issue 6, Pages 739-876, April 13 2006.
• Avoiding Oscillations due to Intelligent Route Control Systems, with R.Gao and E.W.Zegura. In the Proceedings of IEEE INFOCOM. Barcelona, Spain, April 2006.
• ISP and Egress Path Selection for Multihomed Networks, with A.Dhamdhere. In the Proceedings of IEEE INFOCOM. Barcelona, Spain, April 2006.

Funding for the IRC project has been provided by the following two grants:

"Nets-NBD: Intelligent routing control systems: panacea or imminent disaster?" of the US National Science Foundation, and by a URP award ("Dynamics and Stability of Performance-Driven Edge Routing Systems") from Cisco Systems.
Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of NSF or Cisco Systems.

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Constantine Dovrolis (Principal Investigator)