Path Identification in Multipath Routing

Multipath routing is a routing technique of leveraging multiple good paths instead of a single best path for routing .It can be effectively used for maximum utilization of network resources. In contrast to single path approach, multipath routing can better utilize network bandwidth and balance network traffic. It gives the node a choice of next hops for the same destination. There are two strategies for allocating traffic over available path . First is to distribute traffic among multiple paths instead of routing all the traffic along a single path. Second is to forward traffic using only the path with the best metric and keep other discovered paths as backups that can be used in case of congestion or blocking. Thus multipath routing is an alternative to single shortest path routing to distribute load and lighten congestion in the network. There are various algorithms presented in literature for effectively calculating the multiple paths and ways to minimize delay and increased throughput. In this paper, We have discussed some multipath routing approaches considering path construction and selection criteria.