Improving End-to-End Network Throughput Using Multiple Best Paths Routing in Software Defined Networking

The use of shortest path algorithms for routing a packet in the network has a tendency to elect only one single best path, even though there are several paths that have same best path criteria. Using only one best path may cause a bottleneck in the networks. This paper proposes a method to utilize multiple best path based on link utilization in order to increase end-to-end network throughput. The method uses DFS (Depth-First Search) algorithm to find all available paths and elect the $n$ best paths based on link utilization. To distribute the traffic across multiple selected best paths, the group action feature of Open vSwitch is utilized. The test result shows that the proposed method can outperform the Dijkstra's shortest path algorithm in network throughput.