The Border Gateway Protocol (BGP) allows an autonomous system (AS) to apply diverse local policies for selecting routes and propagating reachability information to other domains. However, BGP permits ASes to have conflicting policies that can lead to routing instability. This paper proposes a set of guidelines for an AS to follow in setting its routing policies, without requiring coordination with other ASes. Our ap-proach exploits the Internet's hierarchical structure and the commercial relationships between ASes to impose a partial order on the set of routes to each destination. The guide-lines conform to conventional traffic-engineering practices of ISPs, and provide each AS with significant flexibility in se-lecting its local policies. Furthermore, the guidelines ensure route convergence even under changes in the topology and routing policies. Drawing on a formal model of BGP, we prove that following our proposed policy guidelines guaran-tees route convergence. We also describe how our method-ology can be applied to new types of relationships between ASes, how to verify the hierarchical AS relationships, and how to realize our policy guidelines. Our approach has sig-nificant practical value since it preserves the ability of each AS to apply complex local policies without divulging its BGP configurations to others. 1.

Abstract—Dynamic routing protocols such as RIP and OSPF essentially implement distributed algorithms for solving the shortest paths problem. The border gateway protocol (BGP) is currently the only interdomain routing protocol deployed in the Internet. BGP does not solve a shortest paths problem since any interdomain protocol is required to allow policy-based metrics to override distance-based metrics and enable autonomous systems to independently define their routing policies with little or no global coordination. It is then natural to ask if BGP can be viewed as a distributed algorithm for solving some fundamental problem. We introduce the stable paths problem and show that BGP can be viewed as a distributed algorithm for solving this problem. Unlike a shortest path tree, such a solution does not represent a global optimum, but rather an equilibrium point in which each node is assigned its local optimum. We study the stable paths problem using a derived structure called a dispute wheel, representing conflicting routing policies at various nodes. We show that if no dispute wheel can be constructed, then there exists a unique solution for the stable paths problem. We define the simple path vector protocol (SPVP), a distributed algorithm for solving the stable paths problem. SPVP is intended to capture the dynamic behavior of BGP at an abstract level. If SPVP converges, then the resulting state corresponds to a stable paths solution. If there is no solution, then SPVP always diverges. In fact, SPVP can even diverge when a solution exists. We show that SPVP will converge to the unique solution of an instance of the stable paths problem if no dispute wheel exists. Index Terms—BGP, Border Gateway Protocol, interdomain routing, internet routing, path vector protocols, stable routing.

IP routing requires the cooperation of a large number of Autonomous Systems (ASes) via the Border Gateway Protocol (BGP). Each AS applies local policies for selecting routes and propagating routes to others, with important implications for the reliability and stability of the global system. In and of itself, BGP does not ensure that every pair of hosts can communicate. In addition, routing policies are not guaranteed be safe, and may cause persistent protocol oscillations. Backup routing is often used to increase the reliability of the network under link and router failures, at the possible expense of safety. This paper presents two models for backup routing that increase global network reliability without compromising safety. Indeed, our models are inherently safe in the sense that they remain safe under any combination of link and router failures. I.

The Border Gateway Protocol (BGP) is the routing protocol used to maintain connectivity between autonomous systems in the Internet. Empirical measurements have shown that there can be considerable delay in BGP convergence after routing changes. One contributing factor in this delay is a BGP-specific timer used to limit the rate at which routing messages are transmitted. We use the SSFNet simulator to explore the relationship between convergence time and the configuration of this timer. For each simple network topology simulated, we observe that there is an optimal value for the rate-limiting timer that minimizes convergence time. 1

An IP routing protocol is safe if it is guaranteed to converge in the absence of network topology changes. BGP, currently the only interdomain routing protocol employed on the Internet, is not safe in this sense. It may seem that the source of BGP's potential divergence is inherent in the requirements for any interdomain routing protocol --- policy-based metrics must be allowed to override distance-based metrics, and each autonomous system must be allowed to independently define its routing policies with little or no global coordination. In this paper we present a Simple Path Vector Protocol (SPVP) that captures the underlying semantics of BGP by abstracting away all nonessential details. We then add a dynamically computed attribute to SPVP routing messages, called the route history. Protocol oscillations caused by policy conflicts produce routes whose histories contain cycles. These cycles identify the policy conflicts and the autonomous systems involved. SPVP is made safe by automati...

It is well-known that BGP, the current inter-domain routing protocol, has many deficiencies. This paper describes a hybrid link-state and path-vector protocol called HLP as an alternative to BGP that has vastly better scalability, isolation and convergence properties. Using current BGP routing information, we show that HLP, in comparison to BGP, can reduce the churn-rate of route updates by a factor 400 as well as isolate the effect of routing events to a region 100 times smaller than that of BGP. For a majority of Internet routes, HLP guarantees worst-case linear-time convergence. We also describe a prototype implementation of HLP on top of the XORP router platform. HLP is not intended to be a finished and final proposal for a replacement for BGP, but is instead offered as a starting point for debates about the nature of the next-generation inter-domain routing protocol. Categories and Subject Descriptors C.2.6 [Communication Networks]: Internetworking General Terms Algorithms, Design, Experimentation, Performance.

In any IP network, routing protocols provide the intelligence that takes a collection of physical links and transforms them into a network that enables packets to travel from one host to another. Though routing design is arguably the single most important design task for large IP networks, there has been very little systematic investigation into how routing protocols are actually used in production networks to implement the goals of network architects. We have developed a methodology for reverse engineering a coherent global view of a network’s routing design from the static analysis of dumps of the local configuration state of each router. Starting with a set of 8,035 configuration files, we have applied this method to 31 production networks. In this paper we present a detailed examination of how routing protocols are used in operational networks. In particular, the results show the conventional model of “interior ” and “exterior ” gateway protocols is insufficient to describe the diverse set of mechanisms used by architects. We provide examples of the more unusual designs and examine their trade-offs. We discuss the strengths and weaknesses of our methodology, and argue that it opens paths towards new understandings of network behavior and design.

de Louvain An understanding of the topological structure of the Internet is needed for quite a number of networking tasks, e.g., making decisions about peering relationships, choice of upstream providers, inter-domain traffic engineering. One essential component of these tasks is the ability to predict routes in the Internet. However, the Internet is composed of a large number of independent autonomous systems (ASes) resulting in complex interactions, and until now no model of the Internet has succeeded in producing predictions of acceptable accuracy. We demonstrate that there are two limitations of prior models: (i) they have all assumed that an Autonomous System (AS) is an atomic structure — it is not, and (ii) models have tended to oversimplify the relationships between ASes. Our approach uses multiple quasi-routers to capture route diversity within the ASes, and is deliberately agnostic regarding the types of relationships between ASes. The resulting model ensures that its routing is consistent with the observed routes. Exploiting a large number of observation points, we show that our model provides accurate predictions for unobserved routes, a first step towards developing structural models of the Internet that enable real applications.

We study the route oscillation problem [16, 19] in the Internal Border Gateway Protocol (I-BGP) [18] when route reflection is used. We propose a formal model of I-BGP and use it to show that even deciding whether an I-BGP configuration with route reflection can converge is an NP-Complete problem. We then propose a modification to I-BGP and show that route reflection cannot cause the modified protocol to diverge. Moreover, we show that the modified protocol converges to the same stable routing configuration regardless of the order in which messages are sent or received.

BGP allows routers to use general preference policies for route selection. This paper studies the impact of these policies on convergence time. We first describe a real-time model of BGP. We then state and prove a general theorem providing an upper bound on convergence time. Finally, we show how to the use the theorem to prove convergence and estimate convergence time in three case studies.