Fast network failure recovery using multiple BGP routing planes

Abstract

We present an efficient multi-plane based fast network failure recovery scheme which can be realized using the recently proposed multi-path enabled BGP platforms. We mainly focus on the recovery scheme that takes into account BGP routing disruption avoidance at network boundaries, which can be caused by intra-AS failures due to the hot potato routing effect. On top of this scheme, an intelligent IP crank-back operation is also introduced for further enhancement of network protection capability against failures. Our simulations based on both real operational network topologies and synthetically generated ones suggest that, through our proposed optimized backup egress point selection algorithm, as few as two routing planes are able to achieve high degree of path diversity for fast recovery in any single link failure scenario.