Copyright © 2002 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.
Characterizing and reducing route oscillations in the Internet
Received 2 November 2001;
Abstract
Oscillation of routes in the Internet causes unnecessary overhead. Border Gateway Protocol (BGP) transactions collected from the MAE-East exchange point for 2000 (January–December) show that approximately 16% of routing overhead traffic exhibits oscillating Autonomous System paths. About 66% of these paths used extra, unnecessary hops to route data traffic resulting in up to 10% extra-hop count. Common characteristics are shown to exist in oscillating routes. Our findings demonstrate that long-theorized route oscillations really do occur in the Internet. Faulty implementations and/or poor policy choices are likely causes, where the currently specified method of BGP implicit withdrawals causes propagation through the Internet. To reduce oscillations, we propose a new method of forcing explicit withdrawals in BGP. Simulation experiments with forcing explicit withdrawals show an overall reduction of the transaction traffic, as well as a reduction in path length.
Author Keywords: Routing; Border Gateway Protocol; Route oscillation; Route flap damping
Article Outline
- 1. Introduction
- 2. The BGP protocol and routing instability
- 3. Characterization of BGP transactions
- 4. The significance and reduction of routing oscillations
- 4.1. Reduction of oscillation
- 4.1.1. Proposed changes to the BGP algorithm
- 4.1.2. Experiments based on the proposed change to the BGP algorithm
- 4.2. Interoperability issues
- 5. Summary and future work
- Acknowledgements
- References






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