Maximum Coverage at Minimum Cost for Multi-Domain IP/MPLS Networks

At present, service providers have several incentives to extend the reach of long-lived MPLS paths across domains. Providers, however, will face a number of trade-offs while choosing the optimal set of MPLS paths to be established. In this paper, we focus on the multi-objective decision problem of maximizing the traffic demands to be covered by long-lived MPLS paths from a source domain S to its major destination domains, while minimizing the monetary costs incurred. The problem is formulated subject to a budget constraint, which assures the minimum expected revenue for the provider in S. A major advantage of the analysis and solution proposed in this paper is that it can be easily generalized, and applied in other settings where constrained problems considering maximum coverage vs. cost are critical.