Surveillance strategies for a class of adaptive-routing algorithms in circuit-switched DNHR communications networks: a simulation study

A large, circuit-switched, communications network engineered for historical traffic patterns using dynamic nonhierarchical routing (DNHR) is considered. During overloads, the offered traffic many not follow the historical patterns. In such situations, it is possible to increase network throughput by augmenting the routing tables in near-realtime to utilize instantaneous spare capacity. The surveillance strategy determines how often network data is collected and how frequently additional paths are added to the routing tables. Six surveillance strategies for adaptive routing are examined: (1) 2.5-min surveillance interval; (2) 5-min surveillance interval; (3) 10-min surveillance interval; (4) 15-min surveillance interval; (5) modify the routing every other 5 min; and (6) modify the routing every 5 min with a fixed 10-min lag before the routing tables are changed. Simulation is used to compare the network performance to the baseline performance without adaptive routing for each of the strategies. It is found that the more adaptive strategies, (1), (2), and (6), perform better during periods with variable traffic, and that the less adaptive strategies perform better during periods with stable traffic. During heavy overloads, almost as important as the surveillance strategy is the number of problems, overflowing node pairs, and the algorithm attempts to relieve