Load balancing for QoS in Agile All-Photonic Networks

A Quality of Service (QoS) routing architecture that balances Internet flow traffic with different QoS requirements in Agile All-Photonic Networks (AAPN) is presented. The architecture is based on the static and adaptive routing methods proposed previously for the AAPN network. The static routing method is based on the static Highest Random Weight (static HRW) used for designing load balanced web caches while the adaptive routing method is based on the adaptive Highest Random Weight (adaptive HRW) used for designing load balanced Internet routers. The architecture performance is investigated using traffic that belongs to two DiffServ traffic classes, namely: Expedite Forwarding (EF) that is sensitive to variations in end-to-end delay & traffic drop rate and Best Effort (BE) that can tolerate variations in end-to-end delay. Different routing methods are used to handle the two traffic classes: while the static routing method is used to route the EF traffic, the adaptive routing method is used route the BE traffic. The objective is to have EF packets that belong to the same flow traverse the same path and to preserve load balancing by remapping the BE flows when needed.