Alternative paths computation for congestion mitigation in segment-routing networks

TL;DR

This paper addresses the challenge of quickly rerouting traffic in segment-routing networks to mitigate congestion and failures, proposing new algorithms for precomputing alternative paths to enhance network resilience.

Contribution

It introduces two variants of the alternative path computation problem, including a novel polynomial algorithm for the relaxed version, improving congestion mitigation strategies.

Findings

The NP-hardness of the residual flow maximization problem is established.

A Benders decomposition algorithm effectively solves the NP-hard problem.

The relaxed problem's polynomial algorithm provides a scalable solution.

Abstract

In backbone networks, it is fundamental to quickly protect traffic against any unexpected event, such as failures or congestions, which may impact Quality of Service (QoS). Standard solutions based on Segment Routing (SR), such as Topology-Independent Loop-Free Alternate (TI-LFA), are used in practice to handle failures, but no distributed solutions exist for distributed and tactical congestion mitigation. A promising approach leveraging SR has been recently proposed to quickly steer traffic away from congested links over alternative paths. As the pre-computation of alternative paths plays a paramount role to efficiently mitigating congestions, we investigate the associated path computation problem aiming at maximizing the amount of traffic that can be rerouted as well as the resilience against any 1-link failure. In particular, we focus on two variants of this problem. First, we maximize the residual flow after all possible failures. We show that the problem is NP-Hard, and we solve it via a Benders decomposition algorithm. Then, to provide a practical and scalable solution, we solve a relaxed variant problem, that maximizes, instead of flow, the number of surviving alternative paths after all possible failures. We provide a polynomial algorithm. Through numerical experiments, we compare the two variants and show that they allow to increase the amount of rerouted traffic and the resiliency of the network after any 1-link failure.