Reducing the route flaps in the two-layer network architecture

Due to inevitable cross-layer conflict existing in route objectives of overlay routing and traffic engineering, the interaction between two selfish players causes route oscillations and network performance loss. The interaction is investigated as a Nash routing game with best-reply, where two players have equal status, and take turn to optimize their routes. Overlay routing aims to minimize the total latency of all the overlay paths, while traffic engineering aims to minimize the maximum link utilization of the native network. We propose two simple strategies for overlay and native layers. The simulation results under various network conditions show that these two strategies reduce the route flaps and increase the stability of the whole network.