3rd International ICST Conference on Broadband Communications, Networks, and Systems

Research Article

Accuracy and Dynamics of Hash-Based Load Balancing Algorithms for Multipath Internet Routing

  • @INPROCEEDINGS{10.1109/BROADNETS.2006.4374377,
        author={Ruediger Martin and Michael Menth and Michael Hemmkeppler},
        title={Accuracy and Dynamics of Hash-Based Load Balancing Algorithms for Multipath Internet Routing},
        proceedings={3rd International ICST Conference on Broadband Communications, Networks, and Systems},
        publisher={IEEE},
        proceedings_a={BROADNETS},
        year={2006},
        month={10},
        keywords={},
        doi={10.1109/BROADNETS.2006.4374377}
    }
    
  • Ruediger Martin
    Michael Menth
    Michael Hemmkeppler
    Year: 2006
    Accuracy and Dynamics of Hash-Based Load Balancing Algorithms for Multipath Internet Routing
    BROADNETS
    IEEE
    DOI: 10.1109/BROADNETS.2006.4374377
Ruediger Martin1,*, Michael Menth1,*, Michael Hemmkeppler1,*
  • 1: Department of Distributed Systems, Institute of Computer Science, University of Würzburg, Am Hubland, D-97074 Würzburg, Germany, Telephone: (+49)-931-8886651, Fax: (+49)-931-8886632
*Contact email: martin@informatik.uni-wuerzburg.de, menth@informatik.uni-wuerzburg.de, hemmkeppler@informatik.uni-wuerzburg.de

Abstract

This paper studies load balancing for multipath Internet routing. We focus on hash-based load balancing algorithms that work on the flow level to avoid packet reordering which is detrimental for the throughput of transport layer protocols like TCP. We propose a classification of hash-based load balancing algorithms, review existing ones and suggest new ones. Dynamic algorithms can actively react to load imbalances which causes route changes for some flows and thereby again packet reordering. Therefore, we investigate the load balancing accuracy and flow reassignment rate of load balancing algorithms. Our exhaustive simulation experiments show that these performance measures depend significantly on the traffic properties and on the algorithms themselves. As a consequence, our results should be taken into account for the application of load balancing in practice.