Topology design and bandwidth allocation in ATM nets

The design of a P/S network embedded into a backbone facility network is discussed. The problem is formulated as a network optimization problem where a congestion measure based on the average packet delay is minimized, subject to capacity constraints posed by the underlying facility trunks. The variables in this problem are the routing on the express pipes (i.e. the channels that interconnect the P/S modes) and the allocation of bandwidth to such pipes. An efficient algorithm is presented for the solution of the above problem and it is applied to some representative examples. It is shown that for some test cases the congestion measure is substantially reduced with respect to the values obtained when the embedded topology is kept identical to the backbone topology. Dynamic reconfiguration schemes where the embedded topology is periodically adjusted to track the fluctuations in traffic requirements are discussed