The Traffic Engineering Benefits of Flexible Routing in International Networks

In the past decade, several countries have introduced flexible routing schemes in their domestic network. In large networks with noncoincident busy hours and many alternate routes, the schemes provide, for a given number of circuits, greater throughput than hierarchical routing schemes. In addition, they provide better service when an unexpected event occurs. In this paper we study the extent of these benefits in small bilateral networks without non-coincident busy hours and with only a few alternate routes. This paper describes two ways of introducing flexible routing and provides scenarios and sample networks that illustrate the increased through- put and possible trunk savings in a typical network.