Deflection routing is a
routing
Routing is the process of selecting a path for traffic in a network or between or across multiple networks. Broadly, routing is performed in many types of networks, including circuit-switched networks, such as the public switched telephone netw ...
strategy for networks based on
packet switching which can reduce the need of
buffering packets. Every packet has preferred outputs along which it wants to leave the
router, and when possible, a packet is sent along one of these outputs. However, two or more packets may want to leave along the same output (which is referred to as a ''contention among packets''
), and then only one of the packets may be sent along the link, while the others are sent along available outputs, even though the other links are not preferred by the packets (because, for instance, those links do not yield shortest paths).
Depending on the rate of incoming packets and the capacity of the outgoing links, deflection routing can work without any
packet buffering. Of course, it is always possible to simply drop packets in a network with a
best-effort delivery strategy.
See also
*
Cut-through switching
*
Dynamic Alternative Routing
References
Routing
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