Self-management of virtual paths in dynamic networks

Virtual path management in dynamic networks poses a number of challenges related to combinatorial optimisation, fault and traffic handling. Ideally such management should react immediately on changes in the operational conditions, and be autonomous, inherently robust and distributed to ensure operational simplicity and network resilience. Swarm intelligence based self management is a candidate potentially able to fulfil these requirements. Swarm intelligence achieved by cross entropy (CE) ants is introduced, and two CE ants based path management approaches are presented. A case study of a nation wide communication infrastructure is performed to demonstrate their abilities to handle change in network traffic as well as failures and restoration of links.