Tunnelling the Internet
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Keywords
Keywords: Internet, Autonomous System, loose source routing, tunnelling, broker, traffic congestion.
Abstract
Despite a considerable increase in Internet capacity, regional congestion is still an issue at certain times of day. Dimensioning the system to provide minimal delay under these transient conditions would be uneconomical. We therefore investigate a scheme that allows end-users to selectively exploit a sequence of mini-tunnels along a path from their origin to a chosen destination. Such tunnels can be advertised centrally through a broker, with the cooperation of the Autonomous System (AS) domain operators, similar to a driver choosing to use a toll road to avoid potential congestion. It is thus a type of loose source routing. The approach avoids the need for inter-operator cooperation, although such cooperation could enable extending tunnels across AS peers. We explore the benefit in delay reduction for a given concentration of tunnels within a portion of the Internet. We show that a relatively small number of tunnels can provide worthwhile improvements in performance. We consider both when tunnels are randomly distributed and when they are provided close to an AS domain of interest, where traffic congestion is more likely. In this latter case, even a relatively small number of tunnels can benefit a reasonable number of users across a large region.
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Copyright Telecommunications Association Inc.
Habiba Akter, Queen Mary University of London
Habia Akter received the MEng (Master of Engineering with Honor) degree in Electronic Engineering and Computing in 2016 from Queen Mary University of London, U.K. Right after her graduation she started her PhD in Electronic Engineering in the same university. Her research focuses on the benefits of implementing internet tunnels in the network topology.
Chris Phillips, University of London
Chris Phillips received the B.Eng. degree in telecommunications engineering in 1987 and the Ph.D. degree in concurrent discrete event-driven simulation from the Queen Mary University of London, London, U.K. He then worked in industry for nine years as a Hardware and Systems Engineer with Bell Northern Research, Siemens Roke Manor Research, and Nortel Networks. In 2000, he returned to the Queen Mary University of London. A common theme that underpins his research is how management mechanisms can be developed to enable limited resources to be used effectively in a changing or uncertain environment. His work has focused on broadband network protocols, resource management, and resilience.
