Quickly Converging Renumbering in Network with Hierarchical Link-State Routing Protocol

Abstract

We have developed an automatic network configuration technology for flexible and robust network construction. In this paper, we propose a two-or-more-level hierarchical link-state routing protocol in Hierarchical QoS Link Information Protocol (HQLIP). The hierarchical routing easily scales up the network by combining and stacking configured networks. HQLIP is designed not to recompute shortest-path trees from topology information in order to achieve a high-speed convergence of forwarding information base (FIB), especially when renumbering occurs in the network. In addition, we propose a fixed-midfix renumbering (FMR) method. FMR enables an even faster convergence when HQLIP is synchronized with Hierarchical/Automatic Number Allocation (HANA). Experiments demonstrate that HQLIP incorporating FMR achieves the convergence time within one second in the network where 22 switches and 800 server terminals are placed, and is superior to Open Shortest Path First (OSPF) in terms of a convergence time. This shows that a combination of HQLIP and HANA performs stable renumbering in link-state routing protocol networks.