A distributed routing algorithm for virtual circuit date networks

In virtual circuit networks, all of the packets in a session are transmitted over exactly one path established between the origin and the destination. The problem of choosing a path for each origin-destination pair so as to minimize the average number of packets in the network is considered here. The usual formulation of this problem as a nonlinear multicommodity flow problem with integer decision variables is considered. A distributed algorithm is developed to solve the optimization problem, using Lagrangean relaxation as the basic approach. A multiplier update technique is developed which facilitates the solution of the nonlinear integer programming problem using distributed computation.<>