State aggregation using network flows for stochastic networks

QoS routing is the process of routing a connection based on the connection\´s resource requirements. The overhead involved in QoS routing increases with the network size. State aggregation is an important technique that makes QoS routing scalable. We propose a new domain state aggregation technique based on "network-flows", for stochastic networks. We propose a new fast heuristic algorithm to estimate the PMF of "maximum-flow" through a probabilistic flow network. Using this algorithm, we aggregate the bandwidth information in a domain and use it along with the path aggregate for routing. Through simulations, we show that stochastic estimation of traffic capacity is better than deterministic estimation and gives a better bandwidth admission ratio when compared with existing state aggregation techniques.