Performance comparison of not-via addresses and maximally redundant trees (MRTs)

Maximally redundant trees (MRTs) have been suggested in IETF as a new promising method for fast rerouting in IP networks. Unlike loop-free alternates (LFAs), they can protect against all link and node failures if topology allows. In this work, we compare MRTs and not-via addresses, which also guarantee full-failure coverage. We evaluate path lengths and relative link loads for single link and node failures in various test networks. The performance of MRTs significantly depends on the chosen root node so that the analysis presented in this paper should be performed before the roll-out of MRTs in operational networks.