Network performance tuning using reinforcement learning

Performance degradation in communication networks are caused by a set of faults, called soft failures, owing to which the network resources like bandwidth can not be utilized to the expected level. An automated solution to the performance management problem involves identifying these soft failures followed by the required change in few of the performance parameters to overcome the performance degradation. The identification of soft failures can be done using any of the fault-diagnosis model, and is not discussed here. In this paper, the emphasis is on providing a viable solution to the network performance tuning. Since the exploration of the network performance tuning search space to bring out the required control is not well known in advance, a reinforcement control model is developed to tune the network performance. Ethernet performance management is taken up as a case study. The results obtained by the proposed approach demonstrate its effectiveness in solving the network performance management problem