Network Dimensioning for the Self-Protecting Multipath: A Performance Study

The self-protecting multipath (SPM) is a simple protection switching mechanism that can be implemented, e.g., by MPLS. We present a linear program to optimize the SPM load balancing parameters for network dimensioning. Our study shows that the SPM is a very efficient mechanism in the sense that it requires only little backup capacity since it outperforms the p-cycle approach and the shortest path rerouting by far. The investigation of the computation time and the memory consumption recommends the Simplex method as an LP solver rather than an interior point method (IPM). The computation time of the program depends mainly on the number of links in the network and it is well feasible for small and and medium size networks. For large networks, however, fast heuristics are required.