An Investigation into the effects of non-dynamic routing algorithms and the resultant congestion on the Internet

The Internet is an interconnected mesh of participating IP devices forwarding information worldwide. The speed and volume with which this information travels can vary due to limitations in channel capacity, type & size of media and device capacity. The primary devices, which handle routing decisions on the Internet Backbone, are gateways. The efficiency of gateways at forwarding traffic can be observed through the use of trace packets. These trace packets are sent towards a destination and returned to the sender with the entire round-trip time recorded. The times of the arrival of these packets at each intervening gateway along the route are also recorded. From an exhaustive series of trace packets to a diverse set of destinations, our research has discovered that specific routers are the cause of bottlenecks in the Internet. We found that packets took the same route each time towards their destination. Our research has also found that over periods as large as seven days – these routers continue to cause bottlenecks with no re-routing of packets to alleviate congestion. This research begs the question as to why these bottlenecks occur at the same places – and for so long a period and also queries the extent of implementation of dynamic routing algorithms.