AN ANALYTICAL APPROACH TO THE DYNAMIC TOPOLOGY PROBLEM

Currently, it is possible to modify (say, hourly) the topology of a da ta communications network by adding or deleting network links and/or b y increasing or decreasing bandwidth on existing links in response to changing traffic loads and/or projected network conditions. The intent of this paper is to study a Markov decision process (MDP) model of th e dynamic topology problem (DTP), the problem of activating and/or del eting links, as a function of the current traffic in the network and o f the most recent network topology design. We present a decomposition of this model and structural results for the decomposition. The decomp osition and structural results enhance the tractability of procedures for determining optimal link control policies. A numerical example is used to illustrate these results.