Connections reservation with rerouting for atm networks: A hybrid approach with constraints

Abstract

This paper presents a hybrid method developed at France Telecom R&D to solve a difficult network problem. It takes place in an ATM network administration context and consists in planning connection demands over a period of one year. We introduce a new framework for solving this problem within the allowed computing time. This framework is based on two major elements: first a hybrid method which mixes shortest path algorithms, constraint propagation and repairing principles, then a model for the time dimension which is a critical issue in this ATM network administration problem. We compare our method with a greedy method (without rerouting)presently used in FTR&D upon realistic problems. The results of our experiments show that the difficult problem of rerouting can be solved with our method. Moreover, rerouting leads to accept of 46% of connections that are rejected with the greedy algorithm. This paper is a revised version of [14].