Optimal routing policy of a stochastic-flow network

Under the assumption that each arc's capacity of the network is deterministic, the quickest path problem is to find a path sending a given amount of data from the source to the sink such that the transmission time is minimized. However, in many real-life networks such as computer systems, telecommunication systems, etc., the capacity of each arc is stochastic due to failure, maintenance, etc. Such a network is named a stochastic-flow network. Hence, the minimum transmission time is not fixed. We try to evaluate the probability that d units of data can be sent through the stochastic-flow network within the time constraint according to a routing policy. Such a probability is named the system reliability, which is a performance index to measure the system quality. This paper mainly finds the optimal routing policy with highest system reliability. The solution procedure is presented to calculate the system reliability with respect to a routing policy. An efficient algorithm is subsequently proposed to derive the optimal routing policy.