Abstract
Suppose that some particular link in the Internet is currently congested. A natural solution is to try to make packets bypass that link. This can be done by increasing the cost of that link intentionally, say from a 1 to a 2, since the Internet uses shortest-path routing. Unfortunately, however, this often causes temporary loops for packet traveling, called routing loops. In this paper we show that routing loops can be avoided by increasing the cost of the link not directly from a 1 to a 2 but through an intermediate value, a 3, i.e., from a 1 to a 3 and then to a 2. We may need several intermediate values. We show that in this case the greedy strategy, namely, raising the cost as much as possible in each step, is optimal.
Similar content being viewed by others
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding authors
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Ito, H., Iwama, K., Okabe, Y. et al. Avoiding Routing Loops on the Internet. Theory Comput Systems 36, 597–609 (2003). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00224-003-1119-1
Received:
Revised:
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00224-003-1119-1