Traffic Engineering of Multiple Spanning Tree Routing Networks: the Load Balancing Case

This paper deals with optimal load balancing in telecommunication networks based on multiple spanning tree routing. This is the case in switched Ethernet networks where the operator configures different routing spanning trees and assigns each demand VLAN to one of the spanning trees. We consider modeling and solving three load balancing objectives: (i) minimization of the average link load with a guaranteed optimal worst case link load, (ii) minimization of the worst case link load with a guaranteed optimal average link load and (iii) the min-max optimization of link loads. We also propose heuristic techniques to compute both feasible solutions and lower bounds for the addressed optimization problems. Finally, we assess both the efficiency and the efficacy of the different solution techniques and compare the quality of each problem solution taking into account the optimization criteria of the other problems.