Source routing in computer networks

Abstract

Introductio nAs plans for network interconnection develop, the problems o f internet routing and addressing become increasingly important . In on e popular model of internet addressing, a hierarchical form of network an d local (within network) address is used, with the source providing onl y the destination address while the intermediate network(s) and/or Gateway s between networks take care of routing packets to that destination b y various paths . This and related techniques requiring some form o f routing table and knowledge at intermediate nodes are more full y discussed in [1,2,3] .

Source-Based Path Selection

“…Source routing is a routing technique in which the source specifies a complete or a partial path to the destination [1]. The chosen path is encoded in the packet headers, unlike other routing techniques where distributed forwarding decisions are made at each forwarding device [2].…”

Extensible field addressing

“…The suggestion is that as the network grows the address can be extended by three techniques: adding fields on the left, adding fields on the right, and increasing the size of individual fields. Carl Sunshine has described this type of addressing in a paper on source routing [1].…”

Dynamic multi-path routing and how it compares with other dynamic routing algorithms for high speed wide area network

“…Source routing is used to keep the processing to a minimum in the transit nodes [SUN77]. This enables the network to provide for full end-to-end routing that is adaptive but does not suffer from looping.…”