Multi-path Aggregate Flow Control for Real-time Traffic Engineering

Abstract—We present an online distributed traffic engineering method for ISP networks with multi-path routing. The method is based on edge-to-edge aggregate flow control that balances load and makes the network congestion-free in real time, responding to actual traffic demands whether they are underload or overloaded. Moreover, it allows ISPs to apply various bandwidth-sharing policies to edge-to-edge flows, as desired. Our simulations confirm that the proposed method works as designed for TCP sources that have their own end-to-end congestion control mechanism and enhance the performance and the efficiency of the the network. Index Terms—Traffic engineering, aggregate flow control, path diversity. I