A Mechanism for Dynamic Re-routing of Real-time Channels


	 Colin Parris , Hui Zhang and  Domenico Ferrari 

			Abstract

	Various solutions have been proposed to provide real-time
services (i.e., services with guaranteed performance requirements)
in packet-switched networks. These solutions usually require fixed 
routing and resource reservation for each conversation. The routing 
and reservation decisions, combined with load fluctuations, intro-
duce the problems of network unavailability and  loss of  network
management flexibility. We believe that these problems can be all-
eviated by properly balancing  the network  load.  In this  paper, 
we present a mechanism that dynamically reroutes a real-time channel 
without disruption of service to the clients. This mechanism is one 
component in a framework to investigate load balancing in a real-
time internetwork. We show that the mechanism can be incorporated 
into the Tenet real-time protocol suite with minimal changes and 
overhead.