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1154

IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON COMMUNICATIONS, VOL. COM-31,OCTOBER


NO.
1983
10,

K. DeRosa, L. H. Ozarow, and L. W. Weiner, Efficient packet


satellite communications, f E E E Trans. Comrnun., vol. COM-27,
pp.1416-1422,Oct.1979.
T . Suda,H.Miyahara,
and T. Hasegawa, Optimal bandwidth
assignment on up- and downlinks
of satellite with buffer capacity,
IEEE Trans. Comrnun., vol. COM-28, pp. 1808-1818, Oct. 1980.
J . F. Chang, Packet satellite system with multiuplinksand priority
discipline, IEEE Trans. Comjnun., vol.COM-30, Part 11, pp.
1143-1 152, May 1982.
J . F. Changand L. Y. Lu, Highcapacity low delay packet
switching via a processingsatellite, in Cot$ R e c . , f n t . Con$
Commun., Philadelphia, PA, June 1982, pp. 1E.3.1-IE.3.5.
R. V. Churchill, Complex VariablesandApplications,
2nd ed.
New York: McGraw-Hill, 1960.

[ 141 J.

[ 151
[ 161

[ 171

[ 181

An Algorithm for Optimal Route Selection in SNA


Networks
BEZALEL GAVISH

AND

Absrract-The problem of selecting a single route for each class of


service and each pair of communicating nodes in an SNA network is
considered.Thenodes,links,sets
ofcandidateroutes,andtraffic
characteristics are given. The goal is to select a set of routes which
minimizes the expected network enld-to-end queueing and transmission delay. Queueing is modeled asa network of M / M / I queues which
leads to a nonlinear combinatorial optimization problem.
UsingLagrangeanrelaxationandsubgradientoptimizationtechniques, we obtain a tight lower bound on the minimal expected delay
as well as sets of feasible solutions for the problem. An experimental
very
interactivesystemhas
beenused Ito evaluatetheprocedure;
favorable results have been obtained on a variety of networks.

I. INTROD.UCTION
OMPUTER communicationnetworksare
a vitalpart of
many
industrial,
governmental,
financial,
and
service
institutions.Theysupportanincreasingvarietyof
services.
Backbone networks today can contain from
a few nodes to
hundreds of nodeswithmanyhostssupportingthousands
of users.Most of thecommercially available networksand
network architectures such
as DATAPAC [ 51 , [ 28 1 , SNA
[ 2 2 ] , [ 2 5 ] , NPDN [ 3 4 ] , TRAIVSPAC [81, TELENET [351,
andTYMNET [ 3 0 ] , [ 3 6 ] have adopted a staticorsemidynamic routing method in which routes are defined at system
generation or atsession initiation for each pairof communicat-

Paper approved by the Editor foI Computer Communicationof the


IEEE Communications Society for publication without oral presentation. Manuscript received October19, 1982.
B. Gavish is with the Graduate Schoolof Management, Universityof
Rochester, Rochester, NY 14627.
S. L. Hantler is with the IBM T. J. Watson Research Center, Yorktown Heights, NY 10598.

SIDNEY L. HANTLER

ing nodes. The selection of these routes is of prime importance


in determining the response times experiencedby users and has
a majorsignificanceinreasonableutilizationofnetwork
resources (nodebuffersandlinkcapacities)whileproviding
reasonable service to users.
of optimalrouteselectionin
We consider theproblem
computer
communication
networks
in
which
the
nodes
(hosts
and
communication
controllers),
links,
link
transmission speeds,
and
external
traffic
input
characteristics
are given. Messages originate and terminate at nodes (source
and destination, respectively) and are transmitted from source
todestinationthroughintermediatenodesandlinksalong
fixedroutes,determinedatthetime
of networkdefinition.
(The routes are static.)
Messages in the network are characterizedby class ofservice (e.g., interactive,batch,secure),
and the set of messages of a particular class of service at each
source/destination pair comprise a commodity. Givena subset of all possible routes in the network, we select for each
commodity one route over which all messages for that commodity will be routed. (The routing is nonbifurcated for each
commodity.)
The problem we are studying is that of selecting the optimal set of routes for multicommodity flow in a network with
static, nonbifurcated routing. (Our motivation for concentrating on this case i s that most operational networks use a static
nonbifurcated routing.)
Messages entering the network encounter delay due to the
finite transmission speed of the links and the resultant queueing at intermediate nodes. The delay encountered by messages
depends on thechoiceofroutes,andourobjective
is to
selectthoserouteswhichminimizethe
average
delay
of
messages in the network.
Following Kleinrock [ 2 6 ] , t h e links are modeled as single
server queues with exponential service time distribution. The

0090-6778/83/1000-1154$01 .OO 0 1983 IEEE

GAVISH AND HANTLER: OPTIMAL ROUTE SELECTION

network is a set of such queues at which messages arrive with


aPoissonarrival rate and whose lengths are chosen from an
exponentialdistributionwhich
is identical for allqueues.
Nodesareassumed
t o have infinitebuffersandlinksare
assumed t o have negligible propagation delay. The network delay in such a model is a nonlinear function of link utilization
andtherouting
is assumed t o benonbifurcated.Thisleads
to an optimization problem whose formulation is a nonlinear
zero-one programming problem.
Previousresearch on routing in computer communication
networksbyFrankandChou
[ l o ] , CantorandGerla
[4],
and Bertsekas [ 3 ] has concentrated on the prQblem of optimal
route selection in networks with bifurcated routing. This results in the formulation of a continuous programming problem
with a nonlinear objective function over a convex polyhedral
set.Theproblemhasbeensolvedusingtechniquessuchas
thegradientprojectionalgorithm,flowdeviation,andthe
extrema1 flows method. Gallager [ 121 proposed a distributed
algorithm for optimalrouting of messages inanetworkin
which the traffic input characteristics are slowly
varying over
timeandinwhich
messages of a single commoditymay
traverse different routes at any time. (Thisis quasi-static bifurcated routing.)
There is n o published research which attempts to solve the
nonbifurcatedrouteselectionproblemoptimally.Courtois
and Semal [6] apply a modified version of the Cantor-Gerla
flowdeviationalgorithm
as aheuristicinnetworkswith
nonbifurcatedstaticrouting.Theytestedtheirprocedure
o n avariety of networksand were able t o generategood
solutions for lightly loaded networks.
In SNA networks, up to eight routes are selected at network definition time for each commodity. For each commodity,theseroutesareorderedandbecometheroutesover
whichalltrafficforthatcommodity
will travel. When a
conversation (session) of a oarticular class of service is initiated
by a user, the first active route in that
list (Le., route whose
nodes and links are working and available) is selected
as the
route for all messages of that session. In this paper, we restrict
our attention to the problem of selecting the first route for
each commodity from a set
of given candidates.Thisset of
candidatesmayinclude
all legal SNAroutesbetweenthe
source and destination or may be a suitably chosen subset.
The problem we address is combinatorial in nature, as can
beseenfromasimpleexample.Supposethereareatleast
r routesinthecandidatesetforeachcommodityandthat
there are c commodities in our example network. Then there
are r c possiblechoices for selecting the first route for each
commodity. In a typical small SNA network, we can expect
r to be about five and c to be about 200. The problem confronting the route planner in such a network
is t o select the
optimal 200 routesfromamongtheapproximately
lo4'
choices of 200 routes.
InSections I1 and 111 the route selection problem
is formulated as a nonlinear zero-one integer programming problem.
In Section IV, we introduce a Lagrangean relaxation of our
problem.Therelaxation
is obtainedbydualizingasubset
of the constraints, and in Section
V we show how t o use a
subgradient optimization procedure to move from one relaxation to another in an effort to improve the resultant lower
bound for theproblem. We show, inSection VI, howto
solve therelaxations,inSection
VI1 weshowhowwe
have
implemented this technique in a system for network design,
and in Section VI11 we present some results of computational
tests.Finally,weconcludeby
discussing open
problems
and suggesting further research.

11. PROBLEM FORMULATION


In ordertomodeltheend-toenddelayinthenetwork
we 'use assumptions that are commonly used in modeling the

queueing phenomena in computer networks. We assume that


links have a finite capacity for transmissions, that nodes have
unlimitedbuffers
tostore messages waiting forfreelinks,
and that the arrival processof messages to the network has
exposition we also
aPoissondistribution.Tosimplifythe
assume that links have a negligible propagationdelay,that
nodes have n o message processing delay, and that there
isa
single class of service for each pairof nodes.
The queueing and transmission delay of messages are modeled as a network of MIMI1 queues, in which links are treated
as servers whose service rate is proportional to link capacity,
messages are treated as customers whose waiting area
is networknodes. Using theindependenceassumption(Kleinrock
[ 2 7 ] ) , thequeueingandtransmissiondelay
o n link 1 is
l/(pQl - f l ) , where Ql is the capacity of link 1 inbitsper
second, { l is the arrival rate of messages t o link 1, andl/p
is the expected message length. This formula is used as a basis
for estimating the expected end-to-end delay in the network,
which is the weighted sum of the expected delays of the links
in the routes.
We introduce the following notation for the route selection
problem.

n
L
R

6,l
S,

Qz

f r (or {),
1IP
Xr

The
index
set
of the
communicating
source/
destination pairs (commodities) in the network.
Typically, this is a subset of the node pairs.
Theindexset
of linksinthenetwork.
The
index
set
of candidate
routes.
The
set
of
candidate
routes
can
be
provided
by
users,
generated b y a route generation algorithm or a
combination of thesetechniques.
A route is
characterized by the ordered set
of links (from
source to destination) in the route.
An indicator
function
which
is one if link 1 is
used in route r and is zero otherwise.
The index set of candidate routes for commodity
p . We assume that if p # 4 then S, n S, = qj.
Thecapacityoflink
I inbitspersecond.
The message arrival rate of the unique commodity p associated with router , where r E S,.
The
mean
of the
exponential
distribution
from
which the lengthsof the messages are drawn.
decision
A
variable
which
is one if route r is
selected for message routing and zero otherwise.

Using theabovenotationweconcludethatthetotalbit
1 equals & . ~ f r h r l x r / p From
.
this,we
arrival rateonlink
observe that the expected network delayis

where T = ZpEnf, is thetotal arrival rate of messages in


the network.
The route selection problem (problem IP) is t o find binary
variables x, which satisfy

ZIP = min

subject t o

I156

TRANSACTIONS
COMMUNICATIONS,
IEEEON

VOL. COM-31, NO. 10, OCTOBER 1983

subject to

*,=I
rESp

x r = 0 or 1

VlL

V r E R.

The first constraint ensures that the flow


on each link does
notexceeditscapacity,
while theselection of exactly.one
route per commodity is ensuredbythe
second andthird
constraints. Problem IP is a nonlinear combinatorial optimization problem with constraint set identical to that of the multiple choicemulticonstrainedknapsackproblem(Sinha
and
[ 1 8 ] ) , which is known
Zoltners [ 3 3 ] , Gavish andPirkul
to be NP-complete.Therouteselectionproblem
has the
additional complication of having a nonlinear objective function, thus leading to a more difficult problem.
Research to date on nonlinear combinatorial optimization
problems is quite limited to special cases such as the quadratic
assignmentproblemor
to verysmallproblem sizes.Present
networks contain up to
200 nodeswiththousands of communicating node pairs that select routes from sets containing
from a few thousand to hundreds of thousands of candidate
routes, leading t o verylarge problem sizes. Future networks
will require the solutionof significantly larger problems.
Several methods have beenconsidered as candidatesfoi
solving problem IP. Takingadvantage of thefactthatthe
objective function in (1) is separable over links, y e can relax
the integralityconstraints, replacing them with 0
xr
1
for all r E R . Thisleads to a verylargenonlinear
optimization problem of a separable objective function over a convex
set. Based on the state of the art in the computational ability
to solve the relaxed problems, the idea was rejected. The idea
of using piecewise linearization of the objective function and
solving thelinearprogrammingproblem
wasalso rejected.
The main reason was the fact that the relaxed problems are
very large and solving them would have required a significant
computationaleffortand
wouldhave
generatedfractional
us to use abranch-and-bound(Garfinkel
solutions,forcing
[ 131 ) procedurewhichwould
have made
andNemhauser
matters even worse.

<

<

111. PROBLEMREFORMULATION
In thissection we transformtherouteselectionproblem
formulationintoanequivalentformulationwhich
is better
suitedfora
Lagrangean relaxationprocedure.Letting
fi be
the utilization of link I (i.e.,theproportionofthe
links
capacity consumed by the actual message flow), the objective
function can be rewritten as

where

xr=l

x r = 0 or 1

VrER

where Sp is the index set of routes that support comniodity


p , andand
L I are upperandlowerbounds,respectively,
on the utilization of link
1. When the problem has a feasible
solution, UI is less thanone.Tosimplifytheexposition
we
will assume that LI = 0 and Vi = 1. Once a feasible solution
totheproblem
has beenidentified,thosebounds
can be
significantlytightened
by using informationgenerated
by
the feasible solution.

IV. LAGRANGEANRELAXATION
By multiplying the constraints, in (3) by a vector of rionpositiveLagrangemultipliers,
X I , I E L,andaddingthem
to the objective function, we obtain the Lagrangean relaxation
of problem IP:
L(h) = min
subject to
O<fr<l

VlEL

and

xr= 1
rESp

and

x, = 0 or 1

VrER.

The set of feasible solutions for problem IP is a subset of the


setof
feasible solutionsforthe
Lagrangean relaxation of
problem IP. The nonpositivity of h ensures that in any feasible solutionforproblemIP,theexpression
Z,lELXdfi 2 r E ~ . x ris~nonpositive
y~}
and thus, the value of the objective
function in (4) is never greater than the value of the objective
function in .problem IP. Thus, whenever problem IP hasa
feasible solution, L ( h ) d Z I P . For each vector of multipliers
A, L(h) is a lower bound for Z I P .The best possible bound for
such a procedure is given by the vector of multipliers A* which
satisfy L(h*) = maxAGoL(h). Thus, to have tight bounds we
need a procedure for computingh*.

V. THE SUBGRADIENT
OPTIMIZATION
PROCEDURE

and
or1=

rESp

PQI
r

V r E R andIEL.

Since the objective function in (2) is strictly increasing with


f i we can replace the equality in (3) with an inequality leading
to

Several methods have been suggestedin the literature for


computing a vector of optimal Lagrange multipliers for combinatorial
optimization
problems.
These
include
column
generation procedures [ 2 3 ] , dual ascent and multiplier adjustmentprocedures
[ 91 , andsubgradientoptimizationprocedures [ 2 4 ] . Subgradientoptimizationprocedures have been
shownto
beveryeffectiveinavariety
of combinatorial
optimization problems such as the traveling salesman problem
[ 2 3 ] , the multiple traveling saleman problem [ 191 , topological design of computer communication systems [ 15 1 , [ 161 ,
andlot
sizing in BOMP based systems [ 1 I . This was the

1157

GAVISH AND HANTLER: OPTIMAL ROUTE SELECTION

motivationforthedecisiontoconcentrateonsubgradient
optimization techniques.
Let xr(h), f l ( X ) be an optimal solution to the
Lagrangean
problem for a fixed vector h. A subgradient is the vector with
coordinates

5) Go t o .2.
Extensivecomputationalexperiencewiththisprocedure
has shown that itis very stable and converges in a few hundred
iterationstoasolutionwhich
is veryclose t o L(h*). The
procedure hasbeen
foundto
beinsensitive
totheinitial
multipliervaluesand
totheinitialoverestimate.However,
70) = f O ) xr(h)arl
'J L.
:,.&he rate of convergence andquality
of boundgenerated
rER
'hepends to a large extent on the limits set on the improvement
Poljack [29 1 has shown that when the multipliers are updated
and iteration counters. Low settings terminate the procedure
using the iterative formula
before it reaches a good solution, while high settings consume
X;+' = hkI + t k Y f
( 5 ) excessive computing resources. Good settings of these parameters require careful balancing between these two considerathen
converges to h* provided that tk converges t o 0 and tions, which seems t o be obtained most readily by experimenztk diverges. Held and Karp [ 2 3 ] and later Held e t al. [24 J tation.
have suggested substituting
1
'
.

x:

VI. SOLVING
THE LAGRANGEAN PROBLEM

tk = 6p

ZIP

0yk

m k )
112

The computational efficiency of the subgradient optimization procedure depends on our ability to solve efficiently the
Lagrangean problemwhich is generatedinstep2)b)
of the
subgradient optimization procedure. Fortunately, for a fixed
setofmultipliers,the
Lagrangean problem is separable into
subproblems which are readilysolved.
The Lagrangean problem can be rewritten as

They have shown that if 0 < 6, < 2-and ZIP < L(h*) the
sequence in (5) converges to h*. With ZIP L(h*) this iterative computation of t k has been used in most successful applications of subgradient optimization procedures.
Thesteps involvedin thesubgradientoptimizationprocedure are as follows.
L(h) = min
{&I+
X,fII
1) Initialization:
a ) Using aheuristic,computeanoverestimate
ZIP of
L(X*) or set ZIP to an arbitrarily large value.
b) Select an initial set of multipliers ho and set k , the
+
IEL
1
0, theimprovementcounter
to 0, X*
iterationcounter,to
t o ho, the current best value of L ( h ) t o 0, and 6 , a parameter
with no change in the set of constraints.
for adjusting the stepsize,
to 6 0 (an arbitrary positiveinitial
Since therearenocouplingconstraintsbetweenthe
fr
value, e.g., 2).
and the x, variables, L(X) can be written as L ( h ) = Ll(A)
2) Solving the Lagrangean problem:
L,(X) where
a ) Incrementtheimprovementanditerationcounters
by 1 .
Subproblem 1
b) Solve the Lagrangean problem using X k as the Lagrange
t
1
multipliers. Thus, obtainL ( h k ) and xk ,fk.
3) Testing and updating parameters:
a ) If L ( h k ) isgreaterthanthecurrentbest
value of
L ( h ) thenreplacethecurrentbest
value of L ( h ) by L ( h k )
andset h* t o hk. Also resettheimprovementcountertosubject
to

>

[z

Z X r { X(-

11

-1.
b) If xk is feasible for
problem
IP,
compute
the
value
0 rfl 1
of its associated objective function for that problem. I
f this
valueis less thanthecurrent
value of Zip, thenset ZIP to and
this
Subproblem 2
C )If the improvement counter has reached a prespecified upper limit, then set 6 to 6/2, X k to h*, the improvement
counter to 0, and go to 2)a).
counter
iteration
d ) If the
mespecified
has exceeded
a
limit 0; if 6 is less than a prespecified limit, or &if t i is less
thana prespecified limit,or if (ZIp - L(X*))/L(h*)is less
than a prespecified error tolerance, then stop.
4) Updating the multipliers: Compute a new subgradient
subject t o

hf+'=min(-l,hf+tkyf)

+ 1.

xr=l

Y P E n

xI=oor 1

'JrER.

LOk)
Subproblem 1 canbeseparated
into J LI subproblems,
one for each link, where the subproblem associated with.the
kth link is

Compute the new multipliers

Set k t o k

rESp

Compute the new stepsize


ZIP -

'J I E L

'JZEL.

I158

TRANSACTIONS
IEEE

ON COMMUNICATIONS, VOL. COM-31, NO. 10, OCTOBER 1983

Throughout the optimization process, the system updates


the best Lagrangeanvalue, the multipliers,generated in each
major iteration, and the bestfeasible solution yet generated.
O<fk<l.
Based on the output generated after a major iteration, the
user mayterminate,reenterthesubgradientoptimization
The solution to this subproblemis
procedure with new parameters, or modify the optimization
problem by changinglinkspeeds,
traffic, sessions, or routes
andthenresumetheoptimization.
This
iterative
process
continues until a satisfactory solution has been reached.
The suhgradient optimization procedure requires
anoverestimate Z1p on L(X*) used to update the
Lagrange multiThis gives us the value of Llk and, hence,of L l ( X ) .
Subproblem 2 canbe
separatedinto
In I subproblems, pliers.Thisoverestimate can be a feasible solution generated
byaheuristic
or a large numbergreaterthan
L(X*). The
oneforeachcommodity,wherethesubproblemforeach
following heuristic is used t o generate good feasible solutions.
commodity p is
In eachminoriteration
of thesubgradientoptimization
procedure, Subproblem 2 is solved. We select, for each com= min
xrar
modity,thelowestmodifiedcostroute
as thebestset
of
,ESP
routes for the Lagrangean problem. If this routing is feasible
forproblem IP andresults in ashorterdelaythanthebest
subject to
previousfeasible
solution,it replaces theprevioussolution
andbecomesthe
bestnewfeasible
solution. Insmall
and
x,=1
medium size problemsthisprocedurehasperformed
well
,ESP
and has quickly led t o near-optimal solutions. This, however,
xr=Oor 1
vrrESp
has not been the case in large problems. Here most selections
have beeninfeasible.Carefulexamination
of theprocedure
where a, = X I E (~-Alarl).
hasrevealed that inlarge problemsthereweremany
cases
Thesolutiontothissubproblem
is to set xp = 1foran
in whichdifferentroutes
had anidenticalreducedcost.
In
index 0 which satisfies
those cases, possible ties exist for selecting the primary routes
in the Lagrangean subproblem.
The
procedure
has
been
ap = min a,.
modified
so
that
it
generates
up
t
o
K
different
candidate
rES
solutionsineachiteration.Eachsolution
is determinedby
selecting a single route per commodity. The routes are selected
withidenticalprobabilityfromtheset
of routesthat have
identical
reduced
cost
for
that
commodity.
Routes
are
asVII. PROCEDURE
IMPLEMENTATION
sumed to be identical if the difference between their reduced
Totesttheapplicability
of thesubgradientoptimization
costsinthe
Lagrangean procedure is sufficiently small. The
procedure to network design problems and to obtain estimates solutions are evaluated and the best feasible solution generated
on the rate of convergence, the quality of bounds, and soluis picked as the new bestfeasiblesolution. In the extensive
tionsgenerated, we have implementedtheprocedureinan
computational
experiments
we have conducted,
we
have
APL-based system. The system has a user-friendlyinterface
found this procedure to be effective and efficient in quickly
andenables
the user t o convenientlydefinethenetwork
generating very good feasible solutions.
characteristics, traffic patterns, and optimization
goals t o be
One of the problems with Lagrangean optimization proceachieved.Thesystemprovidesfacilities
t o analyzethe gen- duresis that they cangenerateabound
even if there is no
eratedsolutionsand
allows the user to revise thedataor
feasible solution for the
original problem. When this occurs,
optimization goals and redesign thenetwork.The
process the user is notified that no feasible solution has been generis initiatedbyenteringthenodesandhostsinthenetwork
ated.He is thenexpectedtomodifythe
design toaccomanddefining the communicating node pairs.
Links and their
modate the required traffic. In early states of system developcapacitiesaredefined
next.The user is thenprompted
t o ment, the userhad no guidance in making the modification
specify theroute
generationrequirementswhichare
used andwastedconsiderabletimewithfruitlessattempts.To
in a route generation procedure for generating a set
of candi- assist theuser,thesystemnowrecordsgoodinfeasible
date routeswhich could be additions to the users predefined designs. If, in thefull designcycle, no feasible solution is
set. Next, the user is prompted to specifysession character- discovered, thesystem
provides the user withdataabout
istics which are used to compute the matrix{a,l}. The system these infeasible designs which enables him to identify problem
uses a full screen display and is menu driven by the user who areas in the designs. Such information includes solutions with
has flexible options and escape procedures. It
allows the user the minimal number of saturated links and solutions in which
to
define,
optimize,
and
refine
large,
complex
networks
themaximallysaturated
linkhas minimalutilization. Using
easily and quickly.
these data, the user can modify link capacity or routes so that
After specifying the problem parameters, the user initiates a feasible solutionexistsandthenreentertheoptimization
an optimizationprogramwhich
hetightlycontrols.
Thisis
phase.
done by means of a menu of parameters that the user provides
VIII. COMPUTATIONALRESULTS
and can be changed easily depending on the optimization results.
Thenetwork design systemdescribedinSection
VI1 has
Twotypes
of iterations,majorandminor,aredefined
beenused to test a variety of simulatedand real-world netinthesystem.Amajoriterationconsists
of manyminor
work design problems. It has performed weli without excepiterations, each of which is an evaluation of the current value tion on all the problems tested. In this section we present the
of the objectivefunction,achoice
of subgradientdirection
results of a few computational experiments with the system.
andmodification
of the value of X. Theminoriterations
Figs. 1-4, which are labeled ARPA, OCT, RING, and USA,
is satisfied. define the topologies of four networks, in which every node
terminatewhenone
of thestoppingconditions
For example, the difference between a feasible solution and
communicateswith
every othernode.(Thefirstthreeare
the Lagrangean is small, the subgradient is small, or an upper
networks tested in [6] .) Each ordered pair of nodes consists
limit on the number of iterations has been reached.
of a host node communicating with a terminal node.
subject to

~5

1159

GAVISH AND HANTLER: OPTIMAL ROUTE SELECTION

InARPA(Fig.
l),there
are 420 communicatingnode
pairs with two terminals
in each node, each of which causes
two messages persecondoftraffic
t o be generated in each
direction along the chosen route.
In OCT (Fig. 2), there are
650communicatingnode
pairs withoneterminal
in each
nodegeneratingone
messageper secondin each direction.
In RING(Fig. 3), thereare 992 communicatingnode pairs
with one terminalineachnodegeneratingone
message per
second in each direction.
USA (Fig. 4) has 26nodes,each of which contains two
650 communicating pairs witheach
terminals.Thereare
terminalgeneratingtwomessagespersecondineachdirection.
Table I summarizes the results obtained for these networks
with a variety of routes and traffic data. The mean
message
length is measured inbits,theupperandlowerboundsin
milliseconds, andthenumber
of routeslpairdenotesthe
number of candidateroutes allowed foreachcommunicating pair. Some origin-destination pairs admit fewer candidate
routes than others.
In allcases, the system converged without difficulty to a
feasible solution that was near the lower bound or discovered
thatno
feasible solutionexists.Thecomputingtimesand
numbers of iterationsrequired were shortenoughto
allow
for the use of thesystem as aninteractivetool.Depending
on the number of routes involved, each minor iteration consumedbetween 20 and 100 msofvirtual
CPU time on an
IBM 308 1 . Elapsed time between major iterationswas between
1 and 10 s with 300400 VM users contending for resources.
Significantgapsexist
betweenthelowerboundandthe
bestfeasible
solutiononlywhennetworkscontainnearly
saturated links. In practice,this will not be a problem since
network designers will rarelydesign
networksintended t o
operatenearsaturation.
Analysis
of
such cases indicates
that relatively few linksaretypically
bottlenecks. Increasing
thecapacity
oftheselinkseliminates
thebottlenecksand
significantly
increases
the
predicted
performance
of
such
networks.
In some cases,increasing the number of candidate routes
allowsalternativeroutes
t o be chosen,whicheliminatesthe
bottlenecks.Theexpectedperformance
of thenetwork is
sensitive to the number
of routesinthecandidatesetonly
whenthenumber
of routespercommodity
is oneortwo.
When the number of candidate routes per commodity is three
ormore,theoptimalexpecteddelayremainsalmostunchanged.

ARPA
21 NODES
26 LINKS
-50KbitsIsec

Fig. 1. The ARPA network used in computational experiments.

OCT
26 NODES
30 LINKS
5OKbitsIsec

Fig. 2.

The OCT network used in computationalexperiments.

RING

32 NODES
60 LINKS

IX. CONCLUSIONS
We have used a Lagrangean relaxation procedure to obtain
lower bounds and feasible solutions t o a nonlinear combinatorialoptimizationproblem
arisingin minimizingthemean
delay in networks with given routes and traffic in which delay
is modeled as a network of nonpriority M/M/l queues. Computational experience indicates that this procedure is efficient
and effective in most instances, with duality gaps arising only
in networks near their saturation point.
While subgradientoptimization
seems t o work wellin
practice to solve the relaxed problem, we have no theoretical
results concerning the rate of convergence. Such results would
be desirable, as would computational experience with alternative techniq.ues for solving this nondifferentiable optimization
problem.
We believe thatourtechniquescanbeextendedtonetworks in which delay is modeled as a network of nonpreemptive priority queues. There is a choice of objective functions
in this case, including the possibility of optimizing a weighted
average of the priority delays, and the possibility of optimizing
the high priority delay while ensuring that the lower priority
traffic can be carried. We are also interested in the extent t o

Fig. 3.

-35Kbitskec

___ 33Kbitshec

......... 30Kbitshec

The RING network used in computational experiments.

41 LINKS

Fig. 4.

The USA network used in computational experiments.

1160

IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON COMMUNICATIONS, VOL. COM-31, NO. 10, OCTOBER 1983

TABLE I
SUMMARY OF COMPUTATIONAL RESULTS ONTHE NETWORKS
IN FIGS. 1-4

T
Generate
AKPA
ARPA
ARPA

15
15

2809
2809
2809
420
420
420
210
210

ARPA

I5
2
2
2

ARPA

ARPA

ARPA

OCT
OCT
OCT
OCT
OCT
OCT
OCT

ARPA
ARPA

210
325
598
598

Percent

Length

50
60
65
50
60
65
50
60

7.420

7.575

11.946
15.790
7.432
11.985
15.913
8.040
16.070

0.733
0.715

16.162
7.446
12.005
15.954
8.040
16.070

2.306
0.189
0.167
0.254
0.000
0.000
0.000
0.000
0.220
0.390
0.398
1.958
0.996
2.090

1195
1195

200
220

8
16

2294
2886

220
220

496

100

496
496

77.256
330.750
44.443
49.874
59.563

330.750
45.100
51.232
61.608

1481
1984
1984

I80
183
183
190
200
200
200
210

55.556
53.322
62.831

56.817
54.805
64.006

2762
2762

32
35

6.418
7.288

6.502
7.712

RING

2
2
2
3
4
4

USA

USA

BC

Lower

RING
RING

Message

598
598

RING

TI

65
I80
200
210
21 5
220

2
2
2
2

OCT
OCT
RING
RING
RING
RING
RING

Mean

992
992
992

206.980
102.200
81.276
108.035
128.250
155.890
80.912
154.970

206.980
102.200
81.456
108.459
128.765
159.010
81.720
158.280

150.780

153.370

152.070
13.929

13.929
77.256

1.690
0.847
0.000

12.032

153.370

0.000
0.000
1.456
2.650
3.319
2.220
2.705
I . 836
1.290
5.496

whichourmethodscan
be extendedtonetworkswith
different models of delay, e.g., MJMJmqueues.
The ideas that were presented in this paper can be applied
to related network design pToblems. Work is now in progress
[ 171 on developing modelsandoptimizationtechniques
forthesimultaneousroutingandcapacityassignmentproblemsincomputercommunicationnetworks.Thesemodels
incorporatelinks,traffic,anddelaycostdatatoselectlink
capacities and route the traffic,

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IEEE TRANSACTIONS
ON

1161

COMMUNICATIONS, VOL. COM-31, NO. 10,OCTOBER 1983

Combined Random/Reservation Access for Packet


Switched Transmission Over a Satellite with
On-Board Processing: Part I-Global Beam
Satellite

Absrmcr-A
combined
random/reservation
multiple
access
(CRRMA) scheme for packet-switched communication over a global
beam satellite with on-board processing is proposed and analyzed.
Channel time is divided into contiguous
slots; each slot contains N
minislotsfortransmission
of requestpacketsand
N minislots for
data. With N substantially smaller than the number of earth stations,
collisions will occur in requestpackettransmissions.
Two channel
access algorithms for the CRRMA model are proposed: uncontrolled
channel access (UCA) and controlled channel access (CCA). UCA is
simpler but has an inherent stability problem particularly when the
number of minislots N is small. TheCCAalgorithmrestrictsthe
transmission of request packets for new arrivals to take place only
when the slot is in the FREE state. With N = 3, the CCA algorithm
exhibits good delay-throughput characteristics. As N increases, the
UCA algorithm offers stable operation. For N 2 5 the simpler UCA
algorithm is preferred over CCA.

Paper approved by the Editor for Computer Communication of the


IEEE Communications Society for publication without oral presentation. Manuscriptreceived July 20, 1982; revisedDecember 10, 1982.
This workwas supported by the Natural SciencesandEngineering
Research Council of Canada under a Postgraduate Scholarship and
Grant AIII9.
H. W. Lee is with the Department of Electrical Engineering and the
Computer Communication Networks Group, UniversityofWaterloo,
Waterloo, Ont., Canada N2L 3G1.
J, W. Mark is with Department of Electrical Engineeringand the
Computer Communication Networks Group, University of Waterloo,
Waterloo, Ont., Canada N2L 3G1.

The performance of the CRRMA scheme is compared to those of


slotted ALOHA, reservation ALOHA, and split reservation multiple
access (SRMA). In all cases the proposed CRRMA
scheme exhibits
good delay-throughput performance over
a wide range of channel
utilization.

I . INTRODUCTION
largenumberofpapersonmultipleaccesstechniques
ranging from pure random access to totally coordinated
dynamic assignment access have appeared in the literature.
As
they are too numerouslistto them all, only those whicharepertinent to the present paper are listed in the References.
A primary concern in packet switched data communication
over a broadcast channel is the problem
of organizing the access
of many users which share the common channel. Twoimportant
performancemeasuresinselectingasuitablemultipleaccess
scheme are 1) maximum attainable channel utilization and 2)
meanpacketdelay.Theseperformancemeasuresdependon
the system parameters such as the size of the user population,
the burstiness of data traffic, and the propagation delay. In
this paper we consider a very large user population with bursty
trafficandachannelwithalongpropagationdelay,
e.g., a
satellite channel.
The assumption of a large population of bursty users excludes any consideration of fixed assignment schemes such as
frequency division multiple access (FDMA) and synchronous
timedivisionmultipleaccess(STDMA)whichpermanently
assign a portion of the channel capacity to an individual user,

0090-6778/83/10004 161 $01 .OO 0 1983 IEEE

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