On shortest-path algorithms in the topological design of computer networks: a comparative study

Built into several heuristics available for the topological design of computer networks, and inherent in the multicommodity nature of flow, is the determination of the shortest paths between pairs of nodes. Owing to the repeated requirement for shortest-path analyses during the course of optimization, the computational complexity of the heuristics depends upon the computational complexity of the shortest-path problem. This paper studies critically six shortest-path algorithms which are considered to be highly efficient and elegant, and presents a comparison of their computational complexity, simplicity, accessibility, applicability, capacity and speed.