Overall design of reliable IP networks with performance guarantees

We propose a framework for the overall design problem of Internet protocol (IP) networks with performance guarantees that includes the location of IP switches, their configuration with respect to ports, the design of an access network, the design of a core network, the link dimensioning and traffic routing. The model specifically takes into account the failure scenarios of interest to the network planner and that different types of switches can be used. In order to be able to offer performance guarantees (in terms of bandwidth) for transport layer connections, we suppose that the switches support per-flow queuing with weighted fair queuing (WFQ) and longest-queue drop (LQD). Moreover, we consider the routing constraints imposed by the open shortest path first (OSPF) routing mechanism, The proposed model is of the integer programming variety, and in order to find a good solution, we propose a tabu search algorithm. A detailed network design example is presented