Abstract
Finding paths in networks is a well exercised activity both in theory and practice but still remains a challenge when the search domain is a dynamic communication network environment with changing traffic patterns and network topology. To enforce dependability in such network environments new routing techniques are called upon. In this paper we describe a distributed algorithm capable of finding cyclic paths in scarcely meshed networks using ant-like agents. Cyclic paths are especially interesting in the context of protection switching, and scarce meshing is typical in real world telecommunication networks. Two new next-node-selection strategies for the ant-like agents are introduced to better handle low degrees of meshing. Performance results from Monte Carlo Simulations of systems implementing the strategies are presented indicating a promising behavior of the second strategy.
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Wittner, O., Helvik, B.E. (2002). Cross-Entropy Guided Ant-Like Agents Finding Cyclic Paths in Scarcely Meshed Networks. In: Dorigo, M., Di Caro, G., Sampels, M. (eds) Ant Algorithms. ANTS 2002. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol 2463. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/3-540-45724-0_11
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/3-540-45724-0_11
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