Routing algorithms evaluation for elastic traffic

An innovative simulation technique for the performance of routing algorithms in presence of elastic traffic is proposed in this paper. Traditional simulation tools for the evaluation of routing strategies are based on the generation of calls whose length is determined when the connection enters the network. But the real duration of connections in the Internet depends on the amount of information to be transferred and the (time varying) congestion level of the network. The performance method proposed here takes into account the nature of Internet traffic, while maintaining the efficiency of call based event-driven simulations. Results show that conclusions based on traditional methods can be very far from those obtained with the more accurate method proposed here.