Optimal Routing in a Packet-Switched Computer Network

The problem of finding optimal routes in a packetswitched computer network can be formulated as a nonlinear multicommodity flow problem. The application of traditional mathematical programming techniques to the solution of the routing problem for reasonably large networks is computationally inefficient. Satisfactory results have been recently obtained with various heuristic techniques; however, such techniques are nonoptimal and subject to several limitations. The purpose of this paper is to present a method, based on decomposition techniques, which is exact and, at the same time, computationally very efficient. Such a method, originally developed for a computer network application, can be extended to a variety of convex multicommodity flow problems.