Redesigning network topology with technology considerations

We present a redesign methodology, which automatically redesigns a 3-level network topology with a network technology consideration. The network topology redesign problem is formulated as an optimization problem, subject to a set of design and performance constraints while minimizing the redesign cost. In this paper, we have used a uniform growth of the network load as the main factor for topology redesign; moreover, our methodology attempts to maintain as many as possible of the network devices within the original topology while satisfying the extra growth of the clients´ loads. An evolutionary approach is used to search the redesign space. The experimental results for a 3-level network redesign problem described here demonstrate how valuable (with respect to redesign cost and redesign time) such a methodology in the capacity planning of enterprise networks can be (65 client nodes).