Enhanced Variable Splitting Ratio Algorithm for Effective Load Balancing in MPLS Networks

Abstract

Fast load balancing is of the highest importance to utilize the resources effectively and improve the performance of the Multi Protocol Label Switching (MPLS) enabled Internet Protocol (IP) networks. Load balancing splits a part of traffic called splitting ratio from the maximum loaded path in to minimum loaded path. One very strong constrain in balancing the load is the tradeoff between the delay to reach the balanced state and the oscillations generated by splitting the load at the balanced state. To avoid oscillations, the splitting ratio must be kept small. However, smaller splitting ratio takes more number of iterations to balance the load. To overcome this constrain in this study, an enhanced variable splitting ratio based algorithm was proposed to reduce the delay without oscillations. The splitting ratio was varied depending upon the difference between the maximum path load and the minimum path load. A numerical method was used to evaluate the performance of the algorithm and it was applied to a test network. The simulation results showed that the number of iterations required to balance the load was decreased significantly with out oscillations.