Evolutionary Computation for Quality of Service Internet Routing Optimization

Miguel Rocha*, Pedro Sousa*, Paulo Cortez**, Miguel Rio***

Universidade do Minho
Departamento de Informática*
Departamento de Sistemas de Informação**
P-4710-057 Braga, Portugal

Tel.: +351 253 604430
Fax.: +351 253 604471
E-mail: {{pns,mrocha} (at) di, pcortez (at) dsi}.uminho.pt

      UCL (University College London)***
Department of Computer Science
London WC1E 6BT
United Kingdom

Tel: +44 20 7679 7214
Fax: +44 20 7387 1397
E-mail: M.Rio(at)cs.ucl.ac.uk


Abstract

In this work, the main goal is to develop and evaluate a number of optimization algorithms in the task of improving Quality of Service levels in TCP/IP based networks, by configuring the routing weights of link-state protocols such as OSPF. Since this is a complex problem, some meta-heuristics from the Evolutionary Computation arena were considered, working over a mathematical model that allows for flexible cost functions, taking into account several measures of the network behavior such as network congestion and end-to-end delays. A number of experiments were performed, resorting to a large set of network topologies, where Evolutionary Algorithms (EAs), Differential Evolution and some common heuristic methods including local search were compared. EAs make the most promising alternative leading to solutions with an effective network performance even under unfavorable scenarios.


4th European Workshop on the application of Nature-inspired techniques to Telecommunication Networks and other Connected Systems (EvoCOMNET2007), Valencia, Spain, Apr 11-13, 2007