ONLINE MINIMIZATION OF CALL SETUP TIME VIA LOAD BALANCING - A STOCHASTIC-APPROXIMATION APPROACH

With the addition of new network services. it is anticipated that the processing involved in setting up a call in a circuit-switched network or a session in a packet-switched network will vary greatly for diffe rent types of services. In this paper, we address the problem of reduc ing the call setup time in a circuit-switched network, or equivalently the session setup time in a packet-switched network, through the bala ncing of load across call processors. With a view to designing algorit hms to execute on-line in a system, we formulate a stochastic optimiza tion problem and study the use of stochastic approximation techniques. Given the distributed nature of the problem, we extend previous resul ts obtained for a single node to the case where several nodes operate simultaneously and in an asynchronous manner. Our results include a th eoretical study of convergence as well as several simulation results t hat compare two stochastic approximation techniques.