A survey of computer network design problems

Modern computer networks are complex entities that are difficult to design and manage. Operations Research based modeling, analysis and design tools can play an important role in helping managers, designers and users. There are many problems related to the design of computer networks. Among them the following are well studied problems: protocol specification, performance analysis, and the design of the topology of the network. The objective of topology design is to obtain the capacities and location of the links and interconnection equipment together with the associated routing scheme. This paper presents a literature survey of computer network design problems, with emphasis on topological design problems. These include several classical Operational Research OR problems, such as location problems, minimal cost multicommodity flow problems, minimal Steiner tree problems, among others. The authors present and discuss the modeling of these problems in a computer network context, as well as the solution techniques most commonly used.