ITR/SY: Optimization of Network Topology Design and Management

大规模宽带通信基础设施的设计和升级过程涉及到若干优化问题，包括最佳拓扑设计、服务器布局、服务器间数据的分发和复制以及有限网络资源（如带宽、CPU周期等）的公平分配等问题。在用户中。随着网络规模的扩大和复杂化，使用数学上合理的、可扩展的方法来解决上述问题变得势在必行。本项目的目标是开发和实施这些方法。本项目的主要目标之一是开发网络设计和规模确定的新方法。特别是，该项目的重点是开发优化技术，其目标是构建低成本拓扑，为服务器（例如网络缓存，应用服务器，无线集线器等）选择最佳位置（和大小），and decide决定how to replicated复制the data数据. 一个相关的问题是网络扩展/增强，其目标是决定（在线）在哪里放置新设备，并选择租用哪些新链路以满足增加的需求。由于规模经济的原因，拓扑设计和扩展问题具有凹成本结构，因此不能用经典的基于流的方法来解决。研究人员致力于开发解决上述问题的原则性方法，并设计和实施一套可用于规划和网络管理过程的工具。

The process of designing or upgrading a large-scale broadbandcommunication infrastructure involves solving several optimization problems, includingthe problems of optimum topology design, server placement, distributionand replication of data between the servers, and fair division oflimited network resources (e.g. bandwidth, CPU cycles, etc.) among the users. Asnetworks become larger and more complicated, it becomes imperative touse mathematically sound, scalable methods for solving the above problems.The goal of this project is to develop and implement such methods.One of the main thrusts of the project is development of new approachesfor network design and sizing. In particular, the project focuses ondevelopment of optimization techniques where the goal is to construct a low costtopology, choose optimum locations (and sizes) for servers (e.g. webcaches, application servers, wireless hubs, etc.), and decide how toreplicated the data. A related problem is networkexpansion/augmentation, where the goal is to decide (online) where toplace new equipment and to choose which new links to lease in order tosatisfy the increased demand. Due to economies of scale, topology designand augmentation problems have concave costs structure and hence can notbe solved by classical flow-based approaches. The investigators work ondeveloping principled approaches for solving the above problems and ondesigning and implementing a set of tools that can be used in theplanning and network management process.