Power-aware design of IP core networks under general traffic demands

We consider the problem of minimizing the power consumption of IP core networks by means of power-aware design and auto-configuration of the Points of Presence (PoPs), given general traffic demands on the links. Although the problem is in general NP-complete, we give an optimal algorithm for an important variant in which the number of ports on each line-card chassis is 2. For the general problem, we design two approximation algorithms with respective P=2 and 2 lnN approximation ratios, where P is the number of ports on each line-card chassis, and N is the number of chassis within the PoP. When the traffic demands are correlated, we prove that our algorithms are optimal. Extensive simulations demonstrate that our PoP design and auto-configuration algorithms significantly outperform existing design solutions over a wide range of traffic instances.