Optimal Traffic Partitioning in MPLS Networks

Multiprotocol Label Switching (MPLS) is an emerging Internet technology that facilitates traffic engineering in service provider networks. This paper considers a network performance optimization problem related to traffic engineering over MPLS. We investigate the issue of dynamic partitioning of MPLS ingress traffic into several parallel Label Switched Paths (LSP). Specifically, we present a stochastic framework for the traffic partitioning problem. Within this framework, a set of parallel edge disjoint LSPs is modeled by parallel queues and a partitioning algorithm is devised for different service classes that is adaptive to the prevailing state of the network. The performance of this approach is illustrated by numerical examples.