On the interactions of overlay routing

Overlay routing has been successful as an incremental method to improve the current Internet routing by allowing users to select the Internet paths by themselves. By its nature, overlay routing has selfish behavior, which makes impact on the related components of the Internet routing. In this thesis, we study three interactions related to overlay routing. First, overlay routing changes the traffic patterns observed by the network operating side, which uses traffic engineering techniques to cope with the dynamic traffic demands. We improve this vertical interaction between overlay routing and traffic engineering. Secondly, the performance of overlay routing may be affected by the action of other coexisting overlays. An initial result on the horizontal interaction among multiple overlays is given. Lastly, within a single overlay network, overlay nodes can be regarded as independent decision makers, who act strategically to maximize individual gain. We design an incentive-based framework to achieve Pareto-optimality in the internal interaction of overlay routing.