Performance analysis of the AntNet algorithm

A number of routing algorithms based on the ant-colony metaphor have been proposed for communication networks. However, there has been little work on the performance analysis of ant-routing algorithms. In this paper, we compare the performance of AntNet, an ant-routing algorithm, with Dijkstra’s shortest path algorithm. Our simulations show that the performance of AntNet is comparable to Dijkstra’s shortest path algorithm. Moreover, under varying traffic loads, AntNet adapts to the changing traffic and performs better than shortest path routing.