Goals
Develop a distributed Bellman-Ford algorithm and use it to calculate routing paths in a network. This project is similar to this project, except that we are solving a routing problem, not a switching problem. We will be simulating a small network running the Bellman-Ford algorithm.
In “pure” distance vector routing protocols, the hop count (the number of links to be traversed) determines the distance between nodes. However, some distance vector routing protocols that operate at higher levels like BGP must make routing decisions based on business relationships in addition to hop count.
These protocols are sometimes referred to as Path Vector protocols. We will explore this by using weighted links (including negatively weighted links) in our network topologies.
We can think of Nodes in this simulation as individual Autonomous Systems (ASes), and the weights on the links as a reflection of the business relationships between ASes. Links are directed, originating at one Node and terminating at another.