Reliable Interdomain Routing Through Multiple Complementary Routing Processes

The Internet inter-domain routing protocol, BGP, experiences frequent routing disruptions such as transient routing loops or loss of connectivity. The goal of this paper is to address this issue while preserving BGP’s benefits in terms of operational maturity and flexibility in accommodating diverse policies. In realizing this goal, we apply to inter-domain routing a common concept in the design of highly reliable systems, namely, the use of redundancy, which we introduce in a manner that maximizes compatibility with the existing BGP protocol. The basic idea is to run several, mostly unchanged BGP processes that compute complementary routes, so that in the presence of network instabilities a working path remains available to any destination. The paper outlines the design of this approach and compares it to previously proposed alternatives. The benefits of the scheme are demonstrated using actual BGP data and realistic simulations.