Robust network design under uncertain taffic an approach based on Genetic Algorithm

A network design is robust if it is able to deal with any traffic requirement under certain bounds and physical network conditions. The robust network design is a complex problem of growing importance where, in general, the only information available are traffic bounds of the network links. This work proposes a Genetic Algorithm to design robust networks with optimal capacity of links considering a stable routing with uncertain traffic that can be divided in k sub-routes. The uncertain traffic is handled by usign the hose model which imposes a maximum input/output traffic for each network node. Experimental results for a set of instances with different number of routes show the convenience of a stable routing against a non-divisible routing (k = 1). However, an increasing of the k value implies an increasing of the number of viable solutions, thus, a trade-off relation between k and the quality of solutions obtained by the proposed algorithm was detected.