Exploring the performance benefits of end-to-end path switching

The performance benefits of end-to-end path switching are discussed. The level of path diversity was assessed by conducting extensive measurements across a period of several months to monitor end-to-end delay and loss characteristics of all possible path combinations. For end-to-end delay, there exists a dominant path that always outperforms the other paths between a source and a destination node pair. The results show that while there are significant differences in end-to-end delay performance among various paths, such differences are in general fairly static and thus can be utilized in a straightforward manner.