What is Core Routing Traffic Engineering?
Traffic Engineering describes the technologies and strategies involved with manipulating the paths that traffic flows take across the network. This is typically the most "advanced" feature of a Core Routing network and builds upon the Underlay Transport and Carrier Services functionalities.
Advanced Path Manipulation
Historically, Traffic Engineering was performed on Core Networks by using RSVP (Resource Reservation Protocol). This protocol would guarantee end-to-end levels of service for a given traffic flow, but it required stateful machinery on every router node in the traffic path. Instead, we now utilize Segment Routing technology, which is called SR-TE when it is used for Traffic Engineering purposes. The primary benefit of Segment Routing over the now-obsolete RSVP is that Segment Routing is stateless; it is signaled at the headend of the traffic flow without the need to maintain stateful information at every hop in the path. In addition, it allows for more advanced engineering features such as Flex-Algo (Flexible Algorithm), which provide path computation based on real-time metrics such as delay and link utilization.
Programmatic Control
A key goal of Traffic Engineering is to achieve a more automated approach to network management. In this regard, RSVP has always struggled since it is stateful, requiring complex and often highly-customized machinery to automate. Modern networks built on Segment Routing are well-equipped for advanced automation because the technology makes the network itself highly programmable.
To learn more about any of these Underlay technologies, check out the following resources below or reach out to us at CoreNetworkingHelp@wwt.com
