Bandwidth allocation planning in communication networks

Increasing usage of communication networks and quality of service requirements call for efficient management of these high-speed networks. We address the problem of bandwidth allocation planning of communication demands. Shortest path routing is the traditional technique applied to this problem. However, this approach can lead to poor network utilization and even congestion. We show how an abstraction technique combined with systematic search algorithms and heuristics derived from artificial intelligence make it possible to solve this problem better and in much tighter networks, from a bandwidth usage point of view.