Topological design of local area networks using genetic algorithms

Continually growing number of users have to exchange increasing amounts of information. Local area networks (LANs) are commonly used as the communication infrastructure that meets the demands of the users in the local environment. These networks typically consist of several LAN segments connected together via bridges. The authors describe an algorithm for designing LANs with the objective of minimizing the average network delay. The topology design includes issues such as determination of the number of segments in the network, allocating the users to the different segments and determining the interconnections and routing among the segments. The determination of the optimal LAN topology is a complicated combinatorial optimisation problem. Therefore, a heuristic algorithm which is based on genetic ideas is used. Numerical examples are provided and the quality of the designs obtained by using the algorithm is compared with lower bounds on the average network delay that are developed