Optimal design of the two-level distributed network with dual homing local connections

To keep abreast of the ever-tightening robustness standards of communication services, we consider the topological design of the two-level network where a sufficient level of structural redundancy is imposed: the embedded backbone subnet is fully meshed and each user node is connected to two different backbone nodes. This complicated design problem for the dual homing full-mesh network is formulated as a 0-1 integer problem so that the key structural characteristics of the single homing network design model are carried over. By applying the usual dual-based solution procedure, we develop ours, which consists of three dual and one primal subprocedures. The computational experiments conducted with a variety of test problems illustrate the effectiveness of the proposed solution approach.