Designing OSPF Routing Areas to Meet Diverse End-to-End Performance

This paper describes a novel optimization framework that automates the design of Open Shortest Path First (OSPF) routing areas to meet heterogeneous users´ end-to-end performance needs. The flexible framework supports diverse and dynamically changing performance requirements and networks. For example, it provides everything from: a) highly optimized solutions for network planners designing conventional wired OSPF networks with known application flows, to b) scalability and robust solutions in wireless networks using MANET OSPF extensions with changing application needs. This paper formulates the OSPF areas design as a weighted-sum multi-objective optimization of routing metrics to maximize user capacity, while minimizing the increased delay and lost connectivity. We show that for diverse topologies, the use of multiple objectives can significantly reduce user delay (over 25%) and increases available bandwidth (by over 400%). Further, we show that by simply adjusting the weights, the tool can prioritize the performance requirements and adapt to heterogeneous network environments.