Phone Cards Digest

A best-effort network provides just what its name describes – a network that does its best to deliver packets in a timely manner. It is the least complex and costly network approach and is the design most networks use today. Best-effort networks work well for non-sensitive traffic types such as Web browsing and e-mail since delays in these services generally do not significantly impact the user experience.

Best-effort networks leverage Interior Gateway Protocol (IGP) technologies such as Open Shortest Path First (OSPF) and Intermediate System to Intermediate System (IS-IS) to determine paths for routing packets between hosts. IGP protocols use a Shortest Path First (SPF) algorithm to build routing tables. The routing engine references these routing tables at each router hop traversed by the packets. (continue reading…)