Routing in Telecommunications Networks with “ Smart ” Ant-Like Agents

A simple mechanism is presented, based on ant-like agents, for routing and load balancing in telecommunications networks, following the initial works of Appleby and Stewart (1994) and Schoonderwoerd et al. (1997). In the present work, agents are very similar to those proposed by Schoonderwoerd et al. (1997), but are supplemented with a simplified dynamic programming capability, initially experimented by Guérin (1997) with more complex agents, which is shown to significantly improve the network's relaxation and its response to perturbations. Topic area: Intelligent agents and network management

[1]  T. Koopmans,et al.  Assignment Problems and the Location of Economic Activities , 1957 .

[2]  G. Croes.  A Method for Solving Traveling-Salesman Problems , 1958 .

[3]  C. Brooke Worth,et al.  The Insect Societies , 1973 .

[4]  C. D. Gelatt,et al.  Optimization by Simulated Annealing , 1983, Science.

[5]  Alan S. Perelson,et al.  The immune system, adaptation, and machine learning , 1986 .

[6]  D. Bounds.  New optimization methods from physics and biology , 1987, Nature.

[7]  J. Deneubourg,et al.  Collective patterns and decision-making , 1989 .

[8]  Hogg,et al.  Dynamics of computational ecosystems. , 1989, Physical review. A, General physics.

[9]  Jean-Louis Deneubourg,et al.  The dynamics of collective sorting robot-like ants and ant-like robots , 1991 .

[10]  Guy Theraulaz,et al.  Task differentiation in Polistes wasp colonies: a model for self-organizing groups of robots , 1991 .

[11]  Marco Dorigo,et al.  Distributed Optimization by Ant Colonies , 1992 .

[12]  Marco Dorigo,et al.  An Investigation of some Properties of an "Ant Algorithm" , 1992, PPSN.

[13]  Marco Dorigo,et al.  Ant system for Job-shop Scheduling , 1994 .

[14]  Baldo Faieta,et al.  Diversity and adaptation in populations of clustering ants , 1994 .

[15]  M. Steenstrup.  Routing in communications networks , 1995 .

[16]  G Theraulaz,et al.  Coordination in Distributed Building , 1995, Science.

[17]  Ian C. Parmee,et al.  The Ant Colony Metaphor for Searching Continuous Design Spaces , 1995, Evolutionary Computing, AISB Workshop.

[18]  Luca Maria Gambardella,et al.  Ant-Q: A Reinforcement Learning Approach to the Traveling Salesman Problem , 1995, ICML.

[19]  Marco Dorigo,et al.  Ant system: optimization by a colony of cooperating agents , 1996, IEEE Trans. Syst. Man Cybern. Part B.

[20]  Francis Patrick Kelly,et al.  The Clifford Paterson Lecture, 1995 Modelling communication networks, present and future , 1996, Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series A: Mathematical, Physical and Engineering Sciences.

[21]  E. Bonabeau,et al.  Quantitative study of the fixed threshold model for the regulation of division of labour in insect societies , 1996, Proceedings of the Royal Society of London. Series B: Biological Sciences.

[22]  Léon J. M. Rothkrantz,et al.  Ant-Based Load Balancing in Telecommunications Networks , 1996, Adapt. Behav..

[23]  B. Bullnheimer,et al.  A NEW RANK BASED VERSION OF THE ANT SYSTEM: A COMPUTATIONAL STUDY , 1997 .

[24]  Guy Theraulaz,et al.  Adaptive Task Allocation Inspired by a Model of Division of Labor in Social Insects , 1997, BCEC.

[25]  Alain Hertz,et al.  Ants can colour graphs , 1997 .

[26]  Corso Elvezia.  Ant Colonies for the QAP , 1997 .

[27]  Luca Maria Gambardella,et al.  Ant colony system: a cooperative learning approach to the traveling salesman problem , 1997, IEEE Trans. Evol. Comput..

[28]  Tad Hogg,et al.  An Economics Approach to Hard Computational Problems , 1997, Science.

[29]  T. Stützle,et al.  MAX-MIN Ant System and local search for the traveling salesman problem , 1997, Proceedings of 1997 IEEE International Conference on Evolutionary Computation (ICEC '97).

[30]  E. Bonabeau,et al.  Self-organization in social insects. , 1997, Trends in ecology & evolution.

[31]  Richard F. Hartl,et al.  Applying the ANT System to the Vehicle Routing Problem , 1999 .

[32]  S. Appleby,et al.  Mobile Software Agents for Control in Telecommunications Networks , 2000 .

[33]  Collective Intelligence for Network Control , .