Bandwidth Allocation for Virtual Paths (BAVP): Investigation of performance of classical constrained and genetic algorithm based optimization techniques

We investigate the performance of a classical constrained optimization (CCO) algorithm and a constrained optimization Genetic Algorithm (GA) for solving the Bandwidth Allocation for Virtual Paths (BAVP) problem. We compare throughput, fairness and time complexity of GA-BAVP and CCO-BAVP for several node topologies. The results on maximizing the throughput obtained with GA-BAVP and CCO-BAVP are in close agreement, however when considering fairness GA-BAVP outperforms CCO-BAVP, especially for more complex topologies, like the 7-node network, without abundant link capacity. Convergence of the two algorithms appears similar, with GA-BAVP outperforming CCO-BAVP in initial stages, and vice-versa for longer time scales. However as the problem complexity increases the solution time for the Genetic Algorithm does not increase as fast as the classical constrained optimization algorithm. A hybrid scheme is also introduced, combining the benefits of both algorithms. It exhibited better overall convergence rate but the same solution as CCO-BAVP.