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Optimization Method of Spanning Tree Aggregation for Hierarchical QoS Routing

Lei Lei, Yuefeng Ji, Kan Zheng
School of Telecommunications Engineering Beijing University of Posts and Telecommunications, Beijing, 100876, P. R. China Email: leil@buptnet.edu.cn, jyf@bupt.edu.cn, zkan@buptnet.edu.cn
AbstractIn hierarchical networks, the topology and QoS parameters of a domain have to be first aggregated before being propagated to other domains. However, topology aggregation may distort useful information. This paper focuses on minimizing the distortion caused by reducing a full-mesh representation to a spanning tree. An optimization method of minimizing the distortion of additive parameters caused by spanning tree aggregation is presented. Based on this new method, two approximation algorithms are proposed. Simulation results show that both algorithms perform much better than the traditional way of decoding the spanning tree with upper or lower bounds.

I. INTRODUCTION To achieve scalability and security, the current Internet, ATM networks and even the emerging Automatic Switched Optical Networks (ASON) [1][2] are all structured hierarchically as a collection of domains. At each hierarchy level, the details of the internal domain topologies are not revealed to the outside nodes. Instead, domains will first perform topology aggregation to its internal topology, and only the aggregated view shall be disclosed. Topology aggregation has been studied extensively [3-6]. There are generally two steps in a topology aggregation process. The first step is mandatory, and can be referred to as full-mesh construction. In this step, a logical link is constructed between each pair of border nodes to form a fullmesh aggregated topology. Depending on the QoS routing algorithms, one or more QoS parameters are associated with each logical link. The QoS parameters can be additive, such as delay and physical layer impairments; or restrictive, such as bandwidth. These parameters are derived from the paths between the border nodes in the original topology. The second step is optional, and can be referred to as full-mesh reduction. In this step, the full-mesh representation can be further reduced into a sparser topology, such as a star or a tree. After the aggregation process, the aggregated topology with associated parameters is flooded to other domains. If a node within a certain domain receives a star or tree representation of another domain, it first decodes this reduced representation into the full-mesh version before performing path selection on this aggregated topology. Recently, some aggregation approaches have been proposed for bandwidth-delay sensitive ATM/IP networks [3,4]. These papers focus on minimizing distortion introduced in the first step of aggregation, which happens during parameter derivation. In this paper, we mainly deal with distortion introduced in step two. Since there are O(|B|2)

logical links in the full-mesh representation, but only O(|B|) or less links in a tree or a star representation, where |B| is the number of border nodes, some QoS information may be lost during this encoding phase. Ref. [5] has shown that using spanning tree algorithms to represent a domain is distortionfree for restrictive parameters, but not for additive parameters. Ref. [6] proposed algorithms that can find a minimum distortion-free representation for additive parameters. However, it may require O(|B|2) links in such a representation. In this paper, well propose an optimization method to minimize the distortion of additive parameters in spanning tree aggregation, while still limiting the space complexity to O(|B|). We will use delay to represent the additive parameter in the rest of this paper, although our results can be applied to any other additive parameters. The rest of the paper is organized as follows. Section II introduces the rationale for spanning tree aggregation. Section III describes our new method of minimizing the distortion and two approximation algorithms based on this new method. Our simulation results are given in section IV. Finally, conclusion is made in section V. II. AGGREGATION MODEL We model a domain with a tuple (V, B, E), where V is the set of nodes in the domain, B V is the set of border nodes, and E is the set of bidirectional links between the nodes in V. The full-mesh representation of this domain is modeled as (B, Lm), where Lm is the set of logical links between each pair of border nodes. A delay parameter is associated with each logical link, which equals to the minimum delay value of all paths between the corresponding border nodes. Next, this full-mesh representation with O(|B|2) logical links is reduced to a minimum spanning tree representation with O(|B|) logical links. This spanning tree representation is modeled as (B, Lt), where Lt is the set of logical links in it. Since Lt Lm, we represent the set of logical links in Lm Lt as Lmt. The cardinal of Lm is |B|(|B|1)/2, the cardinal of Lt is |B|1, and the cardinal of Lm t is 1/2|B|23/2|B|+1. When it comes to decoding, the delay value for any logical link li Lt can be derived directly from the tree. However, the delay values for those li Lm t are more difficult to derive, since these logical links along with their delay values are lost during the encoding phase. It follows from the property of the minimum spanning tree that the delay values

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of the links along the unique path between any pair of nodes on the tree cannot be larger than the delay value of the

li P

li.de < reqd < li.da, as might happen in lower bound

li P

decoding, the request will be accepted by the source node, but found infeasible during signaling phase and rejected finally. On the other hand, if li.da < reqd < li .de, as
li P li P

Fig. 1.

Minimum spanning tree

might happen in upper bound decoding, the request can be supported in reality but rejected by the source node according to its inaccurate information. The former case is referred to as wrong acceptation here, while the latter is referred to as wrong rejection. In order to reduce the number of wrong rejection and wrong acceptation, the value of li .de should be as close to li .da as possible. Thus, the goal of our optimization method is to minimize the mean square error

logical link connecting the same pair of nodes in the fullmesh representation. For example, if the minimum spanning tree in Fig.1 is derived from a full-mesh representation, we have dmax(a, b, c). On the other hand, since the full-mesh representation is derived from the original topology based on minimum delay, the total delay of the unique path between any pair of nodes on the tree cannot be smaller than the delay value of the logical link connecting the same pair of nodes in the full-mesh representation. That is, d (a, b, c). Theorem 1: For any logical link li Lmt, the delay value of this link li.d satisfies the following inequality:

2 of li.de:

2 =

1 | li .d a li .d e | 2 | Lm t | li Lm t

(2)

In lower and upper bound decoding, li.de equals to li.dl and li .du respectively. In order to improve upon these decoding methods, additional information need to be included in the encoding phase. Since li .da [li.dl, li.du], we define the divide point of a logical link li (li.dp) as:

max l j .d li .d
l j Pi

l j Pi

l j .d ,

(1)

li .dp =

li .d a li .d l li .d u li .d l

(3)

where Pi is the unique path on the minimum spanning tree between the end nodes of logical link li. When decoding the tree into full-mesh, the upper or lower bounds can be used as the estimated delay values for those li Lmt, as proposed in [5]. But distortion is introduced in this way. In the next section, we propose an optimization method of deriving the delay values for those li Lmt, and two approximation algorithms are introduced based on this new method. III. APPROXIMATION METHOD As discussed in section I, the spanning tree representation in [5] only requires O(|B|) logical links, but introduces distortion; while the subspanner representation in [6] is distortion-free, it sometimes need O(|B|2) logical links. In this paper, our goal is to limit the space complexity for storing the aggregated network state to O(|B|) and maximize the information accuracy at the same time. Before the optimization method is introduced, we first define an optimization criterion. Let the lower bound of the delay value of link li be represented as li.dl, the upper bound as li.du, the actual value as li.da, and the estimated value after decoding as li.de. The delay constraint of a service request is represented as reqd, and the path with minimum delay selected on the aggregated topology for this request is P. If

There are | Lmt | = 1/2|B|23/2|B|+1 divide points for a domain, with each li.dp [0, 1]. To minimize distortion, we propose to encode this information and propagate it along with the spanning tree representation. At the decoding phase, the approximated values of the divide points ( li.dp' ) are derived. Then the value of li.d.e can be calculated as:

li .d e = li .d l + li .dp (l i .d u li .d l )

(4)

In our proposed method, the approximation algorithm of li .dp plays an important role in determining the performance of the aggregation process. It should limit the space complexity of the propagated information to O(|B|), while represent the | Lmt | li.dps as accurately as possible. Two approximation methods are proposed in this paper. A. Single Point Approximation In single point approximation, the | Lmt | divide points are approximated with a single value l.dp'. In fact, l.dp' equals to 0 in lower bound decoding, and 1 in upper bound decoding. However, neither 0 nor 1 is optimal with respect to minimizing . Combining (2) and (4), we have:
2

2 =

1 | li .d a (li .dl + | Lmt | liLm t

l.dp (li .d u li .d l )) |2 (5)

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In order to minimize , let

2

Fig. 2.

rectangular impulse representation

d 2 =0 d (l.dp )

(6)

ak = x(t )Wal (k , t )dt

0

(10)

By solving equation (6) the value of l.dp' is calculated as:

l.dp =

li Lm t

(l .d
i

li .d l ) li .d l )
(7)

li Lm t

(l .d
i

The procedure for Single Point Approximation is summarized as follows: 1. Encode the | Lmt | li.dps with 1 l.dp' by (7). 2. Propagate the l.dp', which occupy the space of 1 float number, to other domains. 3. Let all li.dp's take the value of l.dp'. Calculate li.de with li .dp' by (4). B. WAL Transform Approximation In this approximation algorithm, a variable li.x (0, 1) is associated with each logical link li Lmt:

The Walsh function is a complete set of orthogonal function. With all the Walsh functions and the coefficients calculated by (10), f(t) can be represented without error by (9). However, since only the first |B| functions are used, the approximated f(t) is not exact. In fact, when only the first Walsh function is used, this approximation approach is reduced to the Single Point Approximation. The procedure for WAL Transform Approximation is summarized as follows: 1. Encode the | Lmt | li.dps with |B| ak s by (10) 2. Propagate the aks, which occupy the space of |B| floating numbers, to other domains. 3. Decode |B| aks to | Lmt | li.dp's by (9). Calculate li.de with li.dp' by (4). The space complexity of the overall aggregation process are still O(|B|) after applying both approximation methods. IV. SIMULATION RESULTS In this section, we study the performance of different aggregation algorithms by simulation. We tested the following methods: MST_SP: minimum spanning tree aggregation with single point approximation. MST_WAL: minimum spanning tree aggregation with WAL Transform approximation. MST_UB: minimum spanning tree aggregation with the conservative approach of upper bound decoding. MST_LB: minimum spanning tree aggregation with the aggressive approach of lower bound decoding. MST+2RST: minimum spanning tree aggregation plus two random spanning trees. It is shown in [7] that this aggregation algorithm has better performance than the other spanning tree based aggregation algorithms. The MST+2RST representation can only be decoded by upper bound, since it no longer has the property of minimum spanning tree. A. M.S.E Comparison In this set of experiments, the random topologies are produced according to Waxmans model [8]. In the topology creation process, the node degrees are kept between 2 and 6. This way the resulted topologies have both clustering effect of close nodes and a relative high diameter [9]. We used the topologies that contain 50 and 100 nodes respectively, with 10, 20, 30 and 40 percent of the number of nodes randomly selected as border nodes. For each topology we conducted several experiments, in which links were assigned random values between 1 and 5. We perform topology aggregation on these topologies to compare the mean square errors (M.S.E.) of the estimated link costs caused by different aggregation schemes.

li .x = |Lm t | (l j .d u l j .d l ) 2
j =1

(l .d
j j =1

l j .d l ) 2
(8)

With the values of li.xs and li.dps as horizontal and vertical coordinates respectively, a rectangular impulse f(t) is formed with f(li .x) = li.dp (i = 1,2, ,|Lmt|), as shown in Fig.2. We use the first |B| Walsh functions to approximate this impulse.

x(t ) = akWal (k , t )
k =0

| B|1

(9)

where ak is the coefficient for the kth Walsh function. The value of ak can be calculated with the following function:

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Fig. 3 and Fig. 4 depict the simulation results on the 50 and 100 node topology respectively. The horizontal axis

Fig. 3. comparison between the M.S.E. of the aggregation schemes for the 50 node topology

Fig. 4. comparison between the M.S.E. of the aggregation schemes for the 100 border node topology

shows the number of border nodes. The graphs show that MST_UB causes much higher M.S.E. than the other aggregation schemes. This result shows that the lower bound is closer to the actual delay value than the upper bound. This is reasonable since the minimum delay values between each pair of border nodes within a domain generally do not have too much difference. Thus, the value of max(a, b, c) is more likely to be closer to the value of d than the value of (a, b, c) in Fig.1. MST_LB has similar quality to MST+2RST while using only one third of the number of links. The M.S.E. caused by MST_SP is only about 5% of that of MST_UB, and about 30% of that of MST_LB while using one additional float number. MST_WAL has the lowest M.S.E., which is about 70% of that MST_SP by using |B|-1 additional float numbers. B. Practical Scenario In this set of experiments, we compare the performance of the aggregation algorithms in practice. We generate topologies with the GT-ITM graph generation package, which closely resembles the Internet topology and has a well-defined hierarchical structure [9]. We use the topology

that contains 500 nodes, which are grouped into 5 transit domains. Each transit domain consists of 50 transit routers on average, with each transit router connected to one stub domain. We assume that each stub domain only consists of one host. Every connection request is assumed to have a delay constraint. Connection arrivals are modeled by a Poisson distribution and the connection holding time is assumed to be exponentially distributed. We increment the delay constraint from 150 to 325 with a step of 25. We compare the performance of the aggregation schemes in terms of wrong rejection number (w.r.n.), wrong acceptation number (w.a.n.), and wrong (rejection + acceptation) number (w.r.n.+w.a.n.). The meanings of wrong rejection and wrong acceptation have been explained in section III. We measure the number of wrong rejection and wrong acceptation after all the service requests arrived at the network. We add these two numbers together to compare the allover performance of these algorithms. Each data point is the average of 2000 randomly generated requests. More specifically, given a delay constraint, four topologies are randomly generated. On each topology, 500 requests are generated with source and destination randomly selected from the topology. We run the five methods respectively. Fig. 5 and Fig.6 show the wrong acceptation number and the wrong rejection number of the five methods respectively. MST_UB and MST+2RST dont have any wrong acceptation, but has the largest w.r.n.s because their estimated path delays are always larger than the actual path delays. Similarly, MST_LB doesnt have any wrong rejection, but its w.a.n. is the largest since its estimated delay is always smaller than the actual delay. The w.a.n.s of the two proposed algorithms are much smaller than that of MST_LB, while their w.r.n.s are much smaller than that of MST_UB and MST+2RST, because their estimated delays are closer to the actual delays than the other aggregation algorithms. For a good aggregation algorithm, the number of wrong rejection and wrong acceptation caused by distortion should both be small. Thus, we compare the (w.r.n + w.a.n) of the five algorithms, and the result is shown in Fig.7. Both proposed algorithms have much smaller (w.r.n. + w.a.n.) than that of MST_UB and MST_LB. Also, the (w.r.n. + w.a.n.) of MST_SP is larger than that of MST_WAL. These are in accordance with the comparison of M.S.E.. It might be surprising that although the M.S.E. of MST_UB is much larger than that of MST_LB, the (w.r.n. + w.a.n.) of MST_UB is smaller than that of MST_LB when the delay constraint is below 200. This is because in selecting a smallest delay path, the routing algorithm inherently avoids larger delay links. Since the link delays get larger after MST_UB aggregation, the probabilities of these links being selected by the routing algorithm get smaller. On the other hand, the link delays get smaller after MST_LB aggregation,

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and thus are more likely to be selected by the routing algorithm. Since MST+2RST also uses upper bound

Fig. 7. Fig. 5. wrong acceptation number vs. delay constraint

wrong (rejection + acceptation) number vs. delay constraint

ACKNOWLEDGEMENT This research was jointly supported by the National Science Fund for Distinguished Young Scholars (No. 60325104), National 863 Program (No. 2005AA122210), the Grand Key Science and Technology Research Program of MOE (No.0215), the SRFDP of MOE (No.20040013001), P. R. China. Thanks for the great help. REFERENCES
[1] ITU-T Rec. G.8080/Y.1304, Architecture for the Automatically Switched Optical Network (ASON), Nov. 2001. [2] ITU-T Rec. G.7715/Y.1706, Architecture and requirements for routing in the automatically switched optical network, June. 2002. [3] K. -S. Lui, K. Nahrstedt, and S. Chen, Routing with topology aggregation in delay-bandwidth sensitive networks, IEEE/ACM Transaction on Networking, vol.12, No. 1 , pp. 17-29, Feb. 2004. [4] Y. Tang and S. Chen, QoS information approximation for aggregated networks, Proc. IEEE ICC, pp. .2107 - 2111, 20-24 June, 2004 [5] W. C. Lee, Spanning tree method for link state aggregation in large communication networks, Proc. IEEE INFOCOM , pp. 297302, 26 April, 1995. [6] W. C. Lee, Minimum equivalent subspanner algorithms for topology aggregation in ATM networks, Proc. 2nd Int. Conf. on ATM (ICATM) , pp. 351359, 2123 June, 1999. [7] Y. Shavitt, Topology Aggregation for Networks with Hierarchical Structure: A Practical Approach, [8] B. M. Waxman, Routing of multipoint connections, IEEE Journal of Selected Areas in Communications, pp. 1617-1622, Dec. 1998. [9] B. Awerbuch, Y. Shavitt, Topology Aggregation for Directed Graphs, IEEE/ACM Transaction on Networking, vol.9, No. 1 , pp. 82-90, Feb. 2001. [10] K. Calvert, M. Doar, and E. Zegura, Modeling Internet Topology, IEEE Communication Magazine, June 1997.

Fig. 6.

wrong rejection number vs. delay constraint

decoding, its (w.r.n. + w.a.n.) performance is also better than its M.S.E. performance, and is comparable with that of MST_SP. However, both MST_SP and MST_WAL need smaller number of advertised information than MST+2RST. Thus, MST_SP and MST_WAL achieve the best tradeoff between the number of routing decision errors caused by link delay distortion and the amount of advertised information. V. CONCLUSION

In this paper, we study topology aggregation in hierarchical networks, and propose an optimization method to minimize the mean square errors of additive parameters caused by spanning tree aggregation. Two approximation algorithms, SP and WAL, are proposed based on this new method. In SP, only one additional float number needs to be propagated along with the spanning tree representation. In WAL, |B| additional float numbers need to be propagated. Both algorithms limit the space complexity of aggregation to O(|B|). Simulation results show that the performance of the spanning tree algorithm improves significantly by applying the proposed optimization method and approximation algorithms. Also, WAL approximation algorithm causes smaller additive parameter distortion than SP, at the cost of advertising |B|-1 more float numbers per domain.

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