Minimal Order Loop-Free Routing Strategy

i Conventional distributed adaptive routing strategies usually work well for packet switch ng networks only in the absence of link/node failures. However, they cannot avoid looping messages for an extended period in case of link/node failures. In this paper, we develop a multi-order routing strategy which is loop-free even in the s presence of link/node failures. Unlike most conventional methods in which the same routing trategy is applied indiscriminately to all nodes in the network, nodes under the proposed strat o tegy may adopt different routing strategies in accordance with the network structure. We no nly develop the formulas to determine the minimal order of a routing strategy for each node i to eliminate looping completely, but also propose a systematic procedure to strike a comprom se between the operational overhead and network adaptability. Several illustrative examples are