Active Routing and Forwarding in Active IP Networks

In this paper, we address the problem of active packet routing and forwarding in an active IP network involving both legacy IP routers and active capable routers. We first argue that any traditional routing scheme does not work well in active networks. We then give a formulation of a generalized active routing problem and propose an efficient routing scheme based on the formulation. The scheme is activedestination initiated, and is used for computing paths to a set of active destinations(servers). This selective approach allows the scheme to be seamlessly deployed onto any active IP network. We also present a labeling technique such that a label embedded in a packet can uniquely identify the expected ongoing services on the packet’s journey. With a forwarding table indexed by these labels, a simple and quick label lookup is sufficient to resolve any incoming active packet’s next hop.