Management,control, and design of integrated networks with real-time dynamic routing

Integrated real-time dynamic routing (IRR) networks provide dynamic routing features for multiple classes-of-service on an integrated transport network. In this paper it is shown that IRR networks allow reduced network management costs since with real-time dynamic routing a number of network operations are simplified or eliminated. These simplifications include eliminating the storage of voluminous routing tables in the network switches, eliminating the calculation of routing tables in network design, simplifying the routing administration operations which require downloading new routing information to the network, and eliminating the automatic rerouting function in on-line traffic management. A new bandwidth allocation technique is described here which is based on the optimal solution of a network bandwidth allocation model for IRR networks. The model achieves significant improvement in both the average network blocking and node pair blocking distribution when the network is in a congested state such as under peak-day loads. In a paper to appear in the next Journal issue we further describe a new algorithm for the transport design of IRR networks which achieves near-optimal capacity engineering. These optimization techniques attain significant capital cost reductions and network performance improvements by properly modeling the more efficient operation of IRR networks.