ISP Traffic Engineering by Optimizing Routing Options: A Case of ZAMNET Communication Systems

As the number of Small to Medium Enterprises (SMEs) and individuals in Zambia accessing internet services today increases, there has been increased demand on service provider infrastructure. As the business trends have changed in communication, many organizations are turning to internet services for communication and sharing of resources. The SMEs also setup networks in order to make the process of sharing resources easier but riding on the Internet Service Provider (ISP) networks to interconnect their offices. The Internet Service providers have challenges providing internet services to the SMEs with consistent quality of service (QoS). There are limitations on either side, such as the provider network or client network, including high link congestion, intermediate node loss, high end-to- end delay and poor quality of service (QoS). These limitations lead to poor network performance which impact packet transmission and bandwidth provisioning to SMEs, as a result many complain of poor service. In this paper we present a study on the ISP network performance and the effect of changing the routing/switching options on service provisioning or delivery to the SME clients.