Prioritised best effort routing with four quality of service metrics applying the concept of the analytic hierarchy process

In this paper, a new approach that applies the concept of the Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) in the area of routing in communication networks is proposed. AHP is a well-known model in the area of decision making with multiple objectives. In addition, a new algorithm called Enhanced Best Effort Quality of Service Routing (QoS) with Multiple Prioritised Metrics is proposed for connection-oriented point-to-point communications. Four QoS metrics have been considered: delay, bandwidth, security and loss probability. The results presented and discussed in this paper are focussed on demonstrating the effects of metric prioritisation on the routing decisions. It is found that changing priority of a metric from 0 (the lowest priority) to 1 (the highest priority) applying the proposed algorithm improves the value of that metric by an average of (20–60)% for 90% of utilisation range.