A Study of Network Capacity under Deflection Routing Schemes

Abstract

Routing in bufferless networks can be performed without packet loss by deflecting packets when links are not available. The efficiency of this kind of protocol (deflection routing) is highly determined by the decision rule used to choose which packets have to be deflected when a conflict arises (i.e. when multiple packets contend fo a single outgoing link). As the load offered to the network increases the probability of collision becomes higher and it is to be expected that at a certain maximum offered load the network gets saturated. We present an analytical method to compute this maximum load that nodes can offer to the network under different deflection criteria. © Springer-Verlag 2003.