A New Degree of Freedom in ATM Network Dimensioning: Optimizing the Logical Configuration

A mathematical model is presented that provides a well-defined formulation of the logical configuration problem of ATM networks (the carriers of future B-ISDN) with the objective of maximizing the total expected network revenue, given the physical network parameters and the traffic requirements of each virtual subnetwork. A two-phase solution procedure is developed in which the decision variables are the logical link capacities that specify the logical decomposition into virtual subnetworks, and the load sharing parameters. The first phase of the solution finds a global optimum in a rougher model. The second phase uses this as an initial point for a gradient-based hill climbing that applies the partial derivatives of the network revenue function obtained in a more refined model. >