Architecture and Performance of a Practical IP Fast Reroute Implementation

IP fast reroute (IP FRR) denominates a set of methods and technologies for proactive, local recovery in IP networks. It has received much attention recently, in the research community and the IETF. Several proposals for IP FRR have been published by independent research groups, and main properties and trade-offs are understood. However, only simulation-based and analytical evaluations are known to be performed so far. In this paper we present the architecture and evaluate performance of the first known practical implementation of IP FRR. The architecture features a modular approach consisting of an IP FRR framework and exchangeable backup path calculation modules. The performance evaluation is based on an implementation of multiple routing configurations. The implementation provide throughput that closely matches the achieved performance during normal operation.