An integer linear programming model for optimal self protection multi-path selection

In order to improve resilience in telecommunication networks, multi-paths can be very useful. When disjoint in nature, these multi-paths not only increase resilience of the network, but also tend to optimize the additional capacity required for protection against failures. In this paper, we study the path selection problem for the self-protection multi-path paradigm. We propose a model for load sharing among disjoint multi-paths covering all single link failures. In case of a path failure, the load is re-distributed to the remaining paths. A load distribution of demand over paths in each scenario is determined with the aim of minimizing the maximum bandwidth utilization. We have studied the effect of disjoint and not-disjoint paths in the path set. We observe that if there are more paths available for the optimization process and path selection is left to the discretion of the model, the available capacities can be utilized better and the resultant load distribution on the overall network also balances out.