The Effectiveness of Deflection Routing at the IP Layer

Previous work has shown that overloaded conditions in today’s overprovisioned networks commonly exist, but only for isolated links. Therefore, a simple deflection routing approach can be very effective and is all that is necessary. This work, in contrast to previous work, however, does not place requirements on link weight assignments. It uses link state information to predict the routing behavior of neighbors to know beforehand if loops might be created. This work then conducts an extensive study of random topologies to understand if the types of loops that might not be prevented are significant or common, neither of which is true. It concludes that this simple approach is worthy of consideration for widespread implementation in today’s networks