Multi-hour, multi-traffic class network design for virtual path-based dynamically reconfigurable wide-area ATM networks

The virtual path (VP) concept has been gaining attention in terms of effective deployment of asynchronous transfer mode (ATM) networks in recent years. In a recent paper, we outlined a framework and models for network design and management of dynamically reconfigurable ATM networks based on the virtual path concept from a network planning and management perspective. Our approach has been based on statistical multiplexing of traffic within a traffic class by using a virtual path for the class and deterministic multiplexing of different virtual paths, and on providing dynamic bandwidth and reconfigurability through virtual path concept depending on traffic load during the course of the day. In this paper, we discuss in detail, a multi-hour, multi-traffic class network (capacity) design model for providing specified quality-of-service in such dynamically reconfigurable networks. This is done based on the observation that statistical multiplexing of virtual circuits for a traffic class in a virtual path, and the deterministic multiplexing of different virtual paths leads to decoupling of the network dimensioning problem into the bandwidth estimation problem and the combined virtual path routing and capacity design problem. We discuss how bandwidth estimation can be done, then how the design problem can be solved by a decomposition algorithm by looking at the dual problem and using subgradient optimization. We provide computational results for realistic network traffic data to show the effectiveness of our approach. We show for the test problems considered, our approach does between 6% to 20% better than a local shortest-path heuristic. We also show that considering network dynamism through variation of traffic during the course of a day by doing dynamic bandwidth and virtual path reconfiguration can save between 10% and 14% in network design costs compared to a static network based on maximum busy hour traffic.