Joint optimization of intra- and inter-autonomous system traffic engineering

Traffic Engineering (TE) is used to optimize IP operational network performance. The existing literature generally considers intra- and inter-AS (Autonomous System) TE independently. However, the overall network performance may not be truly optimized when these aspects are considered separately. This is due to the interaction between intra- and inter-AS TE, where a solution of intra-AS TE may not be a good input to inter-AS TE and vice versa. To remedy this situation, we propose considering intra-AS aspects during inter-AS TE and vice versa. We propose a joint optimization of intra- and inter-AS TE to further improve the overall network performance by simultaneously finding the best egress points for the inter-AS traffic and the best routing scheme for the intra-AS traffic. Three strategies are presented to attack the problem, namely sequential, nested and integrated optimization. Our simulation study shows that, compared to sequential and nested optimization, integrated optimization can significantly improve the overall network performance by accommodating 30%-60% more traffic demands.