Heuristic Routing

Heuristic Routing is a system used to describe how data is delivered when problems in a network topology arise. Heuristic routing is achieved using specific algorithms to determine the best, although not always optimal, path to a destination. When an interruption in a network topology occurs, the software running on the networking electronics calculates another route to the desired destination via an alternate available path.

Heuristic routing is also used for vehicular traffic using the highway and transportation network of the world, but that is beyond the scope of this article.

Heuristic routing: Routing in which data, such as time delay, extracted from incoming messages, during specified periods and over different routes, are used to determine the optimum routing for transmitting data back to the sources.

Note: Heuristic routing allows a measure of route optimization based on recent empirical knowledge of the state of the network.