Designing Least-Cost Nonblocking Broadband Networks

Integrated network technologies, such as ATM, support multimedia applications with vastly different bandwidth needs, connection request rates, and holding patterns. Due to their high level of flexibility and communication rates approaching several gigabits per second, the classical network planning techniques, which rely heavily on statistical analysis, are less relevant to this new generation of networks. In this paper, we propose a new model for broadband networks and investigate the question of their optimal topology from a worst-case performance point of view. Our model is more flexible and realistic than others in the literature, and our worst-case bounds are among the first in this area. Our results include a proof of intractability for some simple versions of the network design problem and efficient approximation algorithms for designing nonblocking networks of provably small cost. More specifically, assuming some mild global traffic constraints, we show that a minimum-cost nonblockingstarnetwork achieves near-optimal cost; the cost ratio is at most 2 if switch source and sink capacities are symmetric and at most 3 when the total source and sink capacities are balanced. In the special case of unit link costs, we can show that a star network is indeed the cheapest nonblocking network.