On the T-Adaptive Segment Routing Problem

Abstract

In this paper, we present a multi-period optimization problem arising from the traffic engineering of core IP/MPLS networks, called T-ASR. This problem aims at computing a sequence of segment routing paths that adapt to a multi-period scheduled maintenance, while allowing limited number of path reconfigurations between successive time steps. Rather than focusing solely on minimizing the classical Maximum Link Utilization (MLU) criteria, we introduce a more refined lexicographic objective that minimizes the entire sorted vector of link loads providing a more efficient resource utilization for all the links. We propose a generic approach that decomposes this problem into a sequence of subproblems. To model each subproblem, we introduce two Mixed Integer Linear Programming (MILP) formulations, ALEXA and STELA, resulting in two variants of our approach. Finally, we evaluate and compare the efficiency of both variants on small to medium-sized network instances.