Configuration synthesis for a heterogeneous backbone cluster and a PC-interface network

The design is discussed of the Locus family of networks rendering PC interface (PCI) service. Given are the expected user workload, the hardware costs, and the performance constraints. The workload consists of three classes of users: interactive, highly-interactive, and communication-intensive. The number of PCs is given and is equal to the number of users. It is shown that the problem can be reduced to a discrete capacity and flow assignment (CFA) problem. The backbone capacity assignment is inspired by the Lagrangian decomposition approach. It starts from a backbone capacity assignment which matches the initial flow and chooses a backbone server upgrade that gives the greatest response-time reduction per dollar. At this point, the flow deviation method is applied and iteration is continuous until the constraints are met. Several computational examples of network configuration synthesis are presented that emphasize the significance and generality of the results obtained