Routing and traffic management

We begin by providing an overview of communication networks and discussing their differences from a routing/switching perspective. Subsequently, we focus on both wired and wireless packet-switched communication networks and explain various features of routing techniques. Since routers are essentially an indispensable component in building high-performance communication networks, we briefly examine the different architectures and design issues. We then describe the fundamental routing techniques used in todays networks for unicast, multicast and broadcast communication. After that, we explore advances in routing to provide quality of service support and enforce administrative policies while making the best of the network resources. To see how theory is put into practice, we look at routing protocols for two important communication networks: the Internet and the mobile ad hoc network. We then show how traffic management techniques can help in improving the performance of routing and forwarding of network traffic while optimizing the utilization of network resources. At the end of this chapter, we highlight some directions for future research related to routing and traffic management.