Affiliations: Department of Computer Science, University of Maryland – BC, Baltimore, MD 21228, USA | Institute for Advanced Cumputer Studies, University of Maryland – CP, College Park, MD 20742, USA
Note: [] This research was supported in part by the Department of Defense at the University of Maryland Baltimore County. The views and conclusions contained in this document are those of the authors and should not be interpreted as representing the official policies, either expressed or implied, of the Department of Defense or the U.S. Government.
Abstract: This paper presents a congestion control scheme based on alternate path routing. In the scheme, if a node encounters congestion or loses its preferred neighbor on its primary path to a destination, it sends data packets to that destination over precomputed alternate paths. The scheme ensures that data packets do not travel in loops and limits the spread of congestion to neighboring nodes. Simulations of the scheme show that alternate path routing reduces the number of dropped packets, achieves a more uniform link utilization and alleviates congestion in networks under light to moderate loading. When using alternate path routing, it is observed that the loss ratio closely follows the load ratio which is not true when using shortest path routing.
Keywords: Computer Networks, Routing in Networks, Alternate Paths, Alternate Path Routing, Congestion Control
