On Robust Traffic Engineering in Core Networks

This paper reports on a probabilistic method for traffic engineering (specifically routing and resource allocation) in backbone networks, where the transport is the main service and robustness to the unexpected changes in network parameters is required. We analyze the network using the probabilistic betweenness of the network nodes (or links). The theoretical results lead to the definition of ”criticality” for nodes and links. Link criticality is used as the main metric to model the risk of taking a specific path from a source to a destination node. Different paths will be ranked based on their criticality measure, and the best path will be selected to route the flow along the core network. The choice of the path is in the direction of preserving the robustness of the network to the unforeseen changes in topology and traffic demands. The proposed method is useful in situations like MPLS and Ethernet networks where path assignment is required.