The ability of computing optimal routes poses new challenges when extending it to larger multi-domain network scenarios, as the quality of these computed endto-end inter-domain routes depends on the selection of the domain sequence to be traversed. In the scope of the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF), the Path Computation Element (PCE) Working Group has not provided definitive solutions to address the domain sequence selection problem, being still a work in progress. To this goal, the Path Computation Flooding (PCF) approach appears as a possible extension to Backward Recursive PCE-based Computation (BRPC) to calculate optimal end-to-end inter-domain paths without requiring a pre-configured domain sequence. Nonetheless, PCF presents major scalability issues in terms of network control overhead and path computation complexity, thus pleading for more accurate domain sequence selection techniques. This paper describes two novel mechanisms to establish inter-domain paths calculating the sequence of domains to be crossed when it is not known in advance. Both procedures make a good trade-off between the control overhead introduced and the accuracy of the computed end-to-end route. The obtained simulation results show the benefits of the proposed contributions, drastically reducing the control overhead while keeping the connection blocking probability close to the optimal values.

Peer Reviewed