Decentralized Strategies for Input Flow Routing in Computer Communication Networks

Abstract

The routing problem in computer communication networks which is considered in the paper is characterized by the following features: i) routing decisions are taken only at the input nodes to the network; ii) the input nodes act as decentralized decision makers, without any information exchange; iii) the objective of the routing problem is that of minimizing over the entire network an aggregate cost made up with single link costs which are quadratic in the link flow. The single node strategy is a function of the node information, which is simply the level of the incoming flow. Since no information exchange is supposed to take place in the network among the decision nodes, the considered routing problem induces a static team decision problem. In the paper it is shown how the strategies of the decision makers are actually coupled only through a finite set of parameters, due to the particular structure of the problem considered. These parameters correspond to the average flows assigned to the various paths and they can be found by solving a set of equations which take into account the solution of each decision maker's personal problem and the a-priori distribution of the incoming flows.