Improving the BGP Convergence Duration by Tuning the Protocol

Abstract

Internet is emerging as the main platform for communications infrastructure, because several communication services are totally dependent on it. Communications services such as VoIP, video conferencing, etc. require real time assurance on reliability and availability. However, due to limitations in the inter domain routing protocols such as Border Gateway Protocol version 4 (BGP-4), the performance of Internet is adversely affected. Significant research has been done by researchers to overcome these limitations and to control the BGP path exploration. But ISPs are cautious about introducing these new mechanisms under the assumption of extensive changes to deployment. Therefore, enhancements and extensions to well known existing routing protocols are desirable rather than introducing new routing protocols. In this paper, we have aimed at reviewing the routing protocol parameters to enhance their behavior which in turn enables increased performance of Internet by decreasing the convergence period. Based on simulation results, we have proposed some mechanisms to improve BGP convergence duration. Our simulation results show that careful tuning of routing protocol attributes namely (a) Interior Gateway Protocol (IGP) timers (b) BGP timers, can improve the convergence duration without affecting stability.