A GENETIC ALGORITHM FOR DESIGNING DISTRIBUTED COMPUTER NETWORK TOPOLOGIES

The topological design of distributed packet switched networks consist s of finding a topology that minimizes the communication costs by taki ng into account a certain number of constraints such as the delay and the reliability. This paper proposes a genetic algorithm (GA) for gene rating low-cost feasible computer network topologies subject to these constraints. The implementation of this algorithm has been subjected t o extensive tests in order to measure the quality of solutions. Comput ational results confirm the efficiency of the GA to provide good solut ions for medium-sized computer networks, in comparison with well-tried conventional methods.