Link capacity dimensioning and path optimization for networks supporting elastic services

Abstract

We consider the problem of link capacity dimensioning and routing optimization in networks that support elastic flows and maintain proportional fairness among these flows. We assume that each demand between the origin-destination (O-D) pairs is associated with a minimum and a maximum bandwidth requirement and that a certain allocated bandwidth to a user demand (which must be between these minimum and maximum values) generates revenue for the network operator. On the other hand, the operator is incurred a capacity dependent cost for each link in the network. We then formulate the problem of bandwidth allocation, routing optimization and link capacity dimensioning as an optimization problem where the operator's objective is to maximize profit (under the fairness constraint). We propose computationally efficient algorithms to solve some important variants of this problem.