Routing and scheduling connections in networks that support advance reservations

A key problem in networks that support advance reservations is the routing and time scheduling of connections with flexible starting time and known data transfer size. In this paper we present a multicost routing and scheduling algorithm for selecting the path to be followed by such a connection and the time the data should start and end transmission at each link so as to minimize the reception time at the destination, or optimize some other performance criterion. The utilization profiles of the network links, the link propagation delays, and the parameters of the connection to be scheduled form the inputs to the algorithm. We initially present a scheme of non-polynomial complexity to compute a set of so-called non-dominated candidate paths, from which the optimal path can be found. We then propose two mechanisms to appropriately prune the set of candidate paths in order to find multicost routing and scheduling algorithms of polynomial complexity. We examine the performance of the algorithms in the special case of an Optical Burst Switched network. Our results indicate that the proposed polynomial-time algorithms have performance that is very close to that of the optimal algorithm. We also study the effects network propagation delays and link-state update policies have on performance.