Balancing CapEx reduction and network stability with stable routing–virtual topology capacity adjustment (SR–VTCA)

This paper investigates the merits of the SR–VTCA (stable routing–virtual topology capacity adjustment) approach as a mechanism to find a beneficial trade-off between network stability and reduction in capital expenditures (CapEx). These are two main objectives for the entities that own the optical infrastructure, such as network operators (NOs), and those also acting as Internet service providers (ISPs). The SR–VTCA scheme is a novel approach to adapt transparent optical networks to time-varying traffic by adjusting the number of lightpaths between node pairs, while keeping the IP routing unchanged. Lightpath bundling (LB) and anycast (AS) switching are combined in SR–VTCA operation to advertise lightpath additions/removals to the IP layer as mere adjustments (increments or decrements) in the capacity, allowing to keep the IP routing stable, and thus, simplifying control plane operations. On the contrary, a fully-reconfigurable (FR) network design, where IP routing can be also modified, would increase the burden in the control plane, but at a higher CapEx reduction, since the optical infrastructure is used more efficiently. In this work, we investigate the CapEx overprovision introduced by SR–VTCA with respect to a FR scheme. In order to do this, SR–VTCA planning problem is first modeled as a MILP formulation. A heuristic procedure based on traffic domination is then proposed to solve large instances of the problem. Exhaustive experiments are conducted comparing the SR–VTCA solutions obtained by the aforementioned MILP and heuristic proposal with solutions found by other optimization methods presented in the literature to solve the FR planning problem. Finally, the results show that SR–VTCA can achieve similar results to the FR case in terms of CapEx reduction, while a huge number of IP reroutings are saved by maintaining IP stability. Thus, SR–VTCA provides an advantageous balance between CapEx overprovisioning and the control plane overhead associated with IP rerouting.     

A fast IP lookup scheme for high speed routers

Abstract

One of the key design issues for the next generation of IP routers is the IP lookup mechanism. IP lookup is an important action in a router, that is, to find the next hop for each incoming packet with a longest‐prefix‐match address in the routing table. In this paper, we propose an IP lookup mechanism with the number of memory accesses for an IP lookup being one in the best case and being four in the worst case. The forwarding table needed by our mechanism is small enough to fit in the SRAM. For example, a large routing table with 40000 routing entries can be compacted to a forwarding table of 260KBytes in our scheme.     

Plowing with precedence: A variant of the windy postman problem

In winter, a common problem is to determine the route that a snowplow should take in order to minimize the distance traveled. We propose a variant of this arc routing problem that is motivated by the fact that deadhead travel over streets that have already been plowed is significantly faster than the time it takes to plow the street. This problem differs from most arc routing problems because the cost of traversing a street changes depending on the order of the streets on a route. We develop a method that generates near-optimal solutions to instances as large as 200 nodes.     

A review of routing strategies for optical burst switched networks

The exact contribution of this paper is a review of existing state‐of‐the‐art routing strategies for optical burst switched networks developed by researchers to deal with burst contention before it happens. Routing schemes are implemented in space domain, which make them simple and cost effective. Additionally, the paper points out the importance of routing as an effective way to deal with burst contention compared to other solutions. It also underlines the main differences between contention avoidance schemes and contention resolution techniques for optical burst switched networks. We believe that this review will help different optical burst switched researchers involved in the development of route optimization algorithms to control burst contention. Copyright © 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Understanding farmer cooperatives' self-inspection behavior to guarantee agri-product safety in China

Both global and domestic markets place increasing importance on the quality and safety of food products that are produced in China. The presence of microbial agents, toxic animal and plant products and chemical contamination remain because of the existence of small and dispersed farmers, who are not educated to use agricultural inputs correctly. This inability raises the issue of safety control in the agricultural sector. This study proposes that cooperatives' self-inspection of agricultural products before they enter the market can better organize small farmers to utilize a standardized production and safety management system. Therefore, we attempt to explore the factors that influence farmer cooperatives' self-inspection behavior. An Ordered Logistic Regression Model is employed to estimate the factors that influence cooperatives' choices of inspection frequency. The results show that the respondents expressed a medium to high level of implementing self-inspection but a lower level of concern in testing products by batch. The regression results indicate that subjective norms from the social environment, the perceived behavioral control of managers, ability and rules including input management, production documentation, and social demographic variables, significantly affect cooperatives' self-inspection behavior. The future implementation of safety inspection depends on the extent to which subjective norms, ability, and internal rules can improve agri-product safety in China.     

Solving the Urban Transit Routing Problem using a particle swarm optimization based algorithm

The Urban Transit Routing Problem (UTRP) comprises an NP-hard problem that deals with the construction of route networks for public transit networks. It is a highly complex and multiply constrained problem, in which the assessment of candidate route networks can be both time consuming and challenging. Except for that, a multitude of potential solutions are usually rejected due to infeasibility. Because of this difficulty, soft computing algorithms can be very effective for its efficient solution. The success of these methods, however, depends mainly on the quality of the representation of candidate solutions, on the efficiency of the initialization procedure and on the suitability of the modification operators used.An optimization algorithm, based on particle swarm optimization, is designed and presented in the current contribution, aiming at the efficient solution of UTRP. Apart from the development of the optimization algorithm, emphasis is also given on appropriate representation of candidate solutions, the route networks in other words, and the respective evaluation procedure. The latter procedure considers not only the quality of service offered to each passenger, but also the costs of the operator. Results are compared on the basis of Mandl's benchmark problem of a Swiss bus network, which is probably the only widely investigated and accepted benchmark problem in the relevant literature. Comparison of the obtained results with other results published in the literature shows that the performance of the proposed soft computing algorithm is quite competitive compared to existing techniques.     

节点度估计和静态博弈转发策略的Ad Hoc网络路由协议

针对Ad Hoc网络路由发现过程中广播路由请求分组导致的广播风暴问题，提出了一种基于节点度估计和静态博弈转发策略的Ad Hoc网络路由协议NGRP.NGRP考虑边界影响，采用分段函数的思想将网络场景分为中心、边和角区域，分别估算网络中节点在不同区域的节点度，避免了周期性广播Hello消息获取节点度导致的开销；NGRP路由请求分组的转发采用静态博弈转发策略，利用节点度估算参与转发路由请求分组的节点数量，将转发和不转发作为策略集合，设计效益函数，通过纳什均衡获得节点转发路由请求分组的转发概率，从而减少了路由请求分组广播过程中产生的大量的冗余、竞争和冲突，提高了路由发现过程中路由请求分组的广播效率.运用NS-2对协议的性能进行大量的仿真，结果表明：NGRP的分组投递率、路由开销、MAC层路由开销和吞吐率这4项指标明显优于AODV+FDG，AODV with Hello和AODV without Hello协议.     

Robust energy-aware routing with redundancy elimination

Many studies in literature have shown that energy-aware routing (EAR) can significantly reduce energy consumption for backbone networks. Also, as an arising concern in networking research area, the protocol-independent traffic redundancy elimination (RE) technique helps to reduce (a.k.a compress) traffic load on backbone network. Motivation from a formulation perspective, we first present an extended model of the classical multi-commodity flow problem with compressible flows. Moreover, our model is robust with fluctuation of traffic demand and compression rate. In details, we allow any set of a predefined size of traffic flows to deviate simultaneously from their nominal volumes or compression rates. As an applicable example, we use this model to combine redundancy elimination and energy-aware routing to increase energy efficiency for a backbone network. Using this extra knowledge on the dynamics of the traffic pattern, we are able to significantly increase energy efficiency for the network. We formally define the problem and model it as a Mixed Integer Linear Program (MILP). We then propose an efficient heuristic algorithm that is suitable for large networks. Simulation results with real traffic traces on Abilene, Geant and Germany50 networks show that our approach allows for 16–28% extra energy savings with respect to the classical EAR model.     

An Ant Colony Algorithm (ACA) for solving the new integrated model of job shop scheduling and conflict-free routing of AGVs

This paper concerns with the Job Shop Scheduling Problem (JSSP) considering the transportation times of the jobs from one machine to another. The goal of a basic JSSP is to determine starting and ending times for each job in which the objective function can be optimized. In here, several Automated Guided Vehicles (AGVs) have been employed to transfer the jobs between machines and warehouse located at the production environment. Unlike the advantages of implemented automatic transportation system, if they are not controlled along the routes, it is possible that the production system encounters breakdown. Therefore, the Conflict-Free Routing Problem (CFRP) for AGVs is considered as well as the basic JSSP. Hence, we proposed a mathematical model which is composed of JSSP and CFRP, simultaneously and since the problem under study is NP-hard, a two stage Ant Colony Algorithm (ACA) is also proposed. The objective function is to minimize the total completion time (make-span). Eventually, in order to show the model and algorithm’s efficiency, the computational results of 13 test problems and sensitivity analysis are exhibited. The obtained results show that ACA is an efficient meta-heuristic for this problem, especially for the large-sized problems. In addition, the optimal number of both AGVs and rail-ways in the production environment is determined by economic analysis.     

车联网环境下基于节点认知交互的路由算法

针对车联网（IoV）环境下消息传输效率低下、网络资源开销较大等诸多问题，提出一种适用于城市交通场景下基于车辆节点认知交互的路由算法。首先，依据信任理论提出节点认知交互度的概念，并在此基础上对车联网中的车辆节点进行分类，赋予它们不同的认知交互度初值；同时还引入车辆节点交互时间、交互频率、车辆节点物理间隔距离、间隔跳数以及消息生存时间等影响因子，进而构建了车辆节点认知交互评估模型。基于该模型计算并更新节点的认知交互度，并通过比较对应车辆节点间的认知交互度值来选取认知交互度相对较高的邻居节点作为中继节点进行消息转发。仿真实验结果表明，与Epidemic和Prophet路由算法相比，所提路由算法有效提高了消息投递率并降低了消息投递时延，同时显著降低了网络资源的开销，有助于提升车联网环境的消息传输质量。