On-line restoration for multi-path routing

Multi-Path routing splits a service flow into multiple flow members and each flow member is routed in the network independently. This paper addresses the reliability issues in networks with multi-path routing capability. We provide a novel distributed restoration solution, including the optimal number of service paths and the optimal restoration path based on the total bandwidth requirement. The proposed solution is efficient, scalable, and easy to be implemented in real networks. To assess the quality of the proposed solution, the total bandwidth requirement is first compared between single path routing and multi-path routing. Then the total restoration bandwidth requirement for multi-path routing is compared between disjoint shortest restoration path selection algorithm and the proposed restoration path selection algorithm. Simulation results show that multi-path routing is able to reduce total bandwidth requirement more than 12% than single path routing and the proposed restoration path selection algorithm can further reduce the total restoration bandwidth about 20% on multi-path routing. Index Terms on-line restoration, multi-path routing, distributed algorithm, routing and signalling.