ABSTRACT
This chapter begins with basic ways of formulating multicommodity flow networks (MFN) optimization problems related to the most important cases of link capacity and routing modeling. It introduces link-path and node-link formulations, different routing requirements, and several types of link dimensioning functions. The chapter discusses notions of integer programming and present its fundamental techniques crucial for MFN optimization. It presents two decomposition methods, namely path generation and Benders decomposition, and such approaches as cutting plane, branch-and-bound and its variants, and heuristics. It also presents a selected set of advanced MFN optimization problems related to multistate network design and hence to design of networks robust to equipment failures and traffic variations. The chapter discusses how integer programming techniques are applicable to the important class of problems. It devotes to modeling and optimization techniques applicable to communication network design and planning. It discusses basic kinds of MFN optimization problem formulations and presents representative yet fairly simple examples of network design problems.
