Some Approaches to Solving a Multi - HourBroadband Network Capacity Design

In this paper, we consider solution approaches to a multi-hour combined capacity design and routing problem which arises in the design of dynamically reconngurable broadband communication networks that uses the virtual path concept. We present a comparative evaluation of four approaches, namely: a genetic algorithm; a Lagrangean relaxation based subgradient optimization method; a generalized proximal point algorithm with subgradient optimization; and nally, a hybrid approach where the subgradient based method is combined with a genetic algorithm. Our computational experience on a set of test problems of varying network sizes shows that the hybrid approach often is the desirable choice in obtaining the minimum cost network while the genetic algorithm based approach has the most diiculty in solving large scale problems.