A routing strategy for interconnecting high-speed metropolitan area networks

This paper addresses the interconnection of Local Area Networks (LANs) through high-bandwidth Metropolitan Area Networks (MANs) and the evolution toward a Wide Area Network (WAN). We present an addressing and routing scheme that can be efficiently used on a set of interconnected MANs as it grows into a WAN. This scheme covers both point-to-point and multicast routing, and is flexible enough to be used in any mesh topology, and in all phases of network growth. The algorithms use no permanent global information: consequently, they are adaptive and roobust and simplify network administration. The implementation of the scheme with current technology is discussed, together with a scenario for network growth as a function of demand changes.