Abstract
Open shortest path first (OSPF) is the most widely used intra-domain Internet routing protocol. The OSPF protocol directs the Internet traffic along the shortest paths that are defined by the links weight. Traffic engineering is responsible for improving the network performance, for instance, the objective function that minimizes the maximal link utilization which is usually adopted to avoid the network congestion. This paper formulates the model of OSPF routing, and further evaluates the performance of different approaches. We also propose a heuristic algorithm to solve the routing problems by optimizing OSPF weights. Computational results indicated that the proposed algorithm could lead to good load balancing, and make efficient utilization of network resources. © 2006 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.