Policy Based QoS Support using BGP Routing

Routing protocols are important to exchange routing information between neighboring routers. Such information is used to update routing tables and to share information about status of the network so that traffics to appropriate destinations will be fast and efficient. Different types of routing protocols are in widespread use across the Internet. Apart from determining optimal routing paths and carrying traffics through the networks, these routing protocols should have additional functionalities to support network policies, traffic engineering and security. In this paper we discuss the use of one such routing protocol, the Border Gateway Protocol (BGP) which is the industry standard. We also present an algorithm in which each Autonomous System (AS) decides how to forward its traffic satisfying end-to-endQoS for its users and services. Our proposed algorithm is dynamic in that network status and route advertisements, which change with time and based on traffic loads in the network, are monitored and taken as input to the final decision on traffic forwarding between ASs.