The network stability, performance and QoS guaranties given to the end users strongly depend on the routing protocol. A significant increase of the routing tables average size degrades the routing protocol performance. The route aggregation can be used for decreasing the amount of processing and storing routing information, but creates a lot of configuration and control problems. Traditionally, the route aggregation is used for a fixed network configuration. The edge routers process and store the lower level network detail but only pass the aggregate information to the upper level. In this way, the edge routers saving the upper level routers from unnecessary details and also deny other edge routers the detailed information needed to calculate an efficient aggregation plan for all lower level networks. Later exceptions to the address plan can be handled by CIDR principles, but at the cost of inserting the exception detail into the upper level network to be processed and stored by all of its routers. The paper describes how routers can supplement routing information to automatically determine the best route aggregation and does not require initial configuration of aggregation rules, but instead, only the network interfaces to the subnetworks. Aggregation is thus no longer statically constrained by and pre-calculated from the initial network addressing plan, but automatic and flexible to changes as the routing protocol itself is. The supplemental information needed to do this may be exchanged by using extensions of the routing protocol or a separate message exchange protocol installed on the edge routers of the network.

Date Published: 25 October 2004
PDF: 12 pages
Proc. SPIE 5598, Performance, Quality of Service, and Control of Next-Generation Communication Networks II, (25 October 2004); doi: 10.1117/12.569746

Published in SPIE Proceedings Vol. 5598:
Performance, Quality of Service, and Control of Next-Generation Communication Networks II
Frank Huebner; Robert D. van der Mei, Editor(s)