| Abstract: | This paper deals with the design and performance issues of a protocol, proposed for dynamic topology reconfiguration in high-speed connection-oriented local area networks (LANs). A distributed reconfiguration algorithm is introduced where each network node maintains the minimum-hop-tree connectivity information, corresponding to all the physically reachable network interfaces within the local subnetwork. An incremental and adaptive tree-maintenance strategy is designed for keeping a reconfiguration process isolated from the unaffected parts of the network. A call-by-call routing algorithm, working on top of this reconfiguration protocol, is also proposed with multiple heuristics for optimizing the end-to-end connection hop-count and network load distribution. Simulation results illustrating the correctness and performance of these protocols are included in this paper. Issues regarding a prototype implementation of the presented protocols are also discussed. © 1997 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. |
