DETERMINISTIC ALGORITHM FOR VP ASSIGNMENT IN ATM NETWORKS

Virtual Path (VP) assignment is an important resource management activ ity in ATM networks. By using the VP concept, the logical layout of th e network can be administered to minimize the total network cost to th e provider. We formulate the VP assignment problem as a constrained op timization problem; the objective function to be minimized reflects pr ocessing/control costs at nodes and transmission costs between nodes. The blocking probability quality of service (QoS) requirements and ove rall throughput of the network are taken into consideration in the sol ution process as constraints. Since the solution space is complex, we develop a deterministic, iterative heuristic algorithm to reach a 'nea r-optimal' VP configuration for a given physical network and traffic d emand. The Multi-Rate Loss Network model is used in the calculation of connection-level blocking probabilities. Results for static connectio n-routing are presented, for various forms of the objective function a nd constraints.