An interdomain overlay network based on ISP alliances for economically efficient interdomain traffic routing

As interdomain routing protocol, BGP is fairly simple, and allows plenty of policies based on ISPs' preferences. However, recent studies show that BGP routes are often non-optimal in end-to-end performance, due to technological and economic reasons. To obtain improved end-to-end performance, overlay routing, which can change traffic routing in application layer, has gained attention. However, overlay routing often violates BGP routing policies and harms ISPs' interest. In order to take the advantage of overlay to improve the end-to-end performance, while overcoming the disadvantages, we propose a novel interdomain overlay structure, in which overlay nodes are operated by ISPs within an ISP alliance. The traffic between ISPs within the alliance could be routed by overlay routing, and the other traffic would still be routed by BGP. As economic structure plays very important role in interdomain routing, so we propose an effective and fair charging and pricing scheme within the ISP alliance in correspondence with the overlay routing structure. Finally, we give a simple pricing algorithm, with which ISPs can find the optimal prices in the practice. By mathematical analysis and numerical experiments, we show the correctness and convergence of the pricing algorithm.