How to establish and utilize virtual paths in ATM networks

It is shown that optimizing the use of virtual paths involves computationally hard (NP-complete) problems. Approximate solutions are developed, and it is shown that they have feasible computational complexity for even very large networks and can account for network topology, the available bandwidth, and traffic requirements. It is proved that the proposed approach yields guaranteed performance and provable bounds on the deviation of the results from the optimum.<<ETX>>