Joint optimization of intra- and inter-autonomous system traffic engineering

Traffic Engineering (TE) involves network configuration in order to achieve optimal IP network performance. The existing literature considers intra- and inter-AS (Autonomous System) TE independently. However, if these two aspects are considered separately, the overall network performance may not be truly optimized. This is due to the interaction between intra and inter-AS TE, where a good solution of inter-AS TE may not be good for intra-AS TE. To remedy this situation, we propose a joint optimization of intra- and inter-AS TE in order to improve the overall network performance by simultaneously finding the best egress points for inter-AS traffic and the best routing scheme for intra-AS traffic. Three strategies are presented to attack the problem, sequential, nested and integrated optimization. Our evaluation shows that, in comparison to sequential and nested optimization, integrated optimization can significantly improve overall network performance by being able to accommodate approximately 30%-60% more traffic demand.