Optimal capacity allocation for load balanced shortest path routing

Abstract

In this paper we first describe the load balanced shortest path routing (LB-SPR) protocol. Then, we present the linear program for the optimal capacity allocation, to minimize the resource consumption when LB-SPR is applied in the network. We show that when the load balancing is applied, the capacity allocation problem can be expressed only in terms of the total traffic generated by the network nodes, without the need to know the actual traffic distribution. Then, we compare the resource consumption for the proposed LB-SPR protocol and for the regular shortest path routing (SPR) protocols assuming only the traffic loads that users generate and receive at the network nodes. It will be shown that the proposed LB-SPR protocol needs less network resources. In other words, the LB-SPR protocol can route the same traffic at the lower price than the commonly used SPR protocols.