An efficient near-optimal algorithm for the joint traffic and trunk routing problem in self-planning networks

The configuration and routing problem (or the joint trunk and traffic routing problem) is first formulated as a mixed integer nonlinear minimization problem. Then certain properties are proved about the problem structure. These properties lead to an efficient algorithm that determines near-optimal configurations and routing assignments. A lower bound is also computed in order to evaluate the quality of the solution. The algorithm was coded and tested on several networks. Present computational experiments clearly show that the performance of a self-planning network is always better than that of the same network without the trunk routing capability. The reduction in average packet delay is as much as 67%.<>