Control of multi-service loss networks

A state-dependent routing policy for a multi-service circuit-switched network is synthesized. To meet different requirements, the objective function is defined as the mean value of reward from the network. The theory of Markov decision processes is applied to find the optimal routing policy. It is shown that under the link independence assumption the problem can be decomposed into a set of link analysis problems. In this approach the optimal decision is a function of state-dependent link shadow prices, which are interpreted as prices for using each link from the path. The approach is implementable even for large systems if certain approximations are used. It is shown that the proposed model provides good traffic efficiency and automatic flow control, and that by means of the call reward parameters one can almost independently control the grade of service of each call class