Bio-Inspired Routing and Resource Management for Future Networks

Communication systems have continually played a major role in our lives. In particular in recent years, the Internet has transformed the way people interact and communicate, which has led to increased number of services and functionalities. However, with the increase in changes in network environments, more adaptive, flexible, efficient and scalable techniques are needed to enhance the operation of the network, and at the same time minimise human intervention. The communication network management community have addressed this problem, through the notion of “autonomic network management”. One particular approach of addressing autonomic mechanisms is by borrowing mechanisms and processes that are exhibited by biological systems (e.g. reaction to changes in their environments). This thesis has investigated new bio-inspired solutions that are able to address the challenges of the Future Internet. The thesis will present new bio-inspired mechanisms to provide (i) efficient routing, (ii) energy-aware networking, (iii) adaptive bandwidth allocation and (iv) support of multiple service providers. In the case of (i), the bio-inspired routing protocol is scalable and supports complex and highly dynamic services environments efficiently and robustly (e.g. dynamic traffic, large scale networks). The bio-inspired energy awareness in (ii) is maximising the benefits of the solution in (i) to reduce dramatically the energy consumption of infrastructure networks without disrupting the delivery of services. In the case of (iii), a bio-inspired bandwidth allocation mechanism adapts to new traffic conditions in order to maintain the quality of delivery for prioritised traffic in the event of bandwidth starvation. Lastly in (iv), the new architecture of the Internet,