56 (IJCNS) International Journal of Computer and Network Security,

Vol. 2, No. 3, March 2010

A Hierarchical Genetic Algorithm for Topology

Optimization and Traffic Management in ATM
Networks Utilizing Bandwidth and Throughput
Alaa Sheta1, Malik Braik2 and Mohammad Salamah3
1
Taif University, Information Systems Department,
College of Computers and Information Systems,
Taif, Saudi Arabia
asheta66@gmail.com
2
Al-Balqa’ Applied University, Information Technology Department,
Prince Abdullah Bin Ghazi Faculty of Science and Information Technology,
Salt, Jordan
malik@bau.edu.jo
3
National Education Center for Robotics (NECR),
King Hussein Foundation,
Amman, Jordan
m.omar82@gmail.com

increasingly used in telecommunications systems for high

Abstract: The Asynchronous Transfer Mode (ATM) network is
expected to become a backbone network for high speed digital
multimedia services in distributed environments. This paper
explores an optimization based hierarchical approach using
Genetic Algorithms (GAs) for installing an ATM network with
optimal structure and traffic flow. A Hierarchical Genetic
Algorithm (HGA) is used to solve such an optimization problem.
HGA approach can improve the performance of conventional
GA, though it consumes more computation time. Thus, HGA
approach is capable of reducing the overall delay while
increasing the bits transmitted over the network. This will
definitely improve the network performance and meets the
requirements in multimedia service environments. The
preliminary results indicate that HGA based ATM network
design can be very efficacious.
Keywords: Genetic Algorithms, ATM Network, Flow
Management.
1. Introduction
There is a rapidly demand for telecommunication networks
to function efficaciously despite obstacles such as disabling
portions of the network, limiting the links capacities, high
cabling costs, and so on [1]. Thus, networks must constantly
able to maintain an acceptable level of performance. Despite
this need, the problem of dynamic redesign of functioning
networks still received a little attention. Today, with the
intensifying role of using the Internet and networking
technologies, there have been immense advances in using
the telecommunications services in the present information
society. Asynchronous Transfer Mode (ATM) is one of the
most promising networking technologies. ATM was rated to
reduce the complexity of the network and improve the
flexibility of traffic performance which has good ability for
transmitting many kinds of information, and carry traffic
over all kinds of networks. Furthermore, ATM has been
speed multimedia services [2], [3].
Recently, control flow and management are core concepts of
the optimal structure of ATM networks; hence, flow control
and management have drawn much attention by the
researchers in telecommunication field. In addition to that
the nodes in the ATM network design must be linked in an
economical way to handle expected traffic and capacity
constraints [1], [4]. As the models for the design of ATM
networks are quite complex, and one of the limiting factors
is the requirement of expensive exchange based equipments,
therefore, Genetic Algorithms (GAs) were used to solve such
problems of traffic assignment and topological design of
local area networks [5], [6], flow optimization in survivable
ATM networks [7], and flow assignment in ATM networks
[8]–[10]. However, many programming models have been
developed which deals with telecommunication network
planning [11]. In this context, Evolutionary Algorithms
(EAs) have been frequently applied to telecommunication
services in the last years [9], [12].
This paper handles an optimal ATM network structure (i.e.
topology and link capacities) using Hierarchical Genetic
Algorithms (HGA) [13], [14]. The objectives of the network
planning are: designing the network structure to carry out
the estimated traffic, and minimizing the cost of network
[15],[16]. Consequently, we are dealing with flow
assignment and links capacities as complex optimization
problems using GAs in two levels, the first GA level deals
with selection the optimal network structure, and the second
GA level reduces the overall delay while maintain the
throughput, this cycle will continues until terminated by
some condition.
The remainder of the paper is organized as follows. In
Section 2 we explain the details of GA levels; each
alternative level of HGA is described extensively. The case
 (IJCNS) International Journal of Computer and Network Security, 57
study and the schematic diagram of the ATM network are
discussed in section 3. In Section 4 we provide an extensive
and comprehensive formulation of the use of HGA for
solving the ATM design problem. In section 5 we present
our preliminary results for the ATM network case study.
Finally, in section 6 we offer several concluding remarks and
address the challenges ahead in the future enhancements.
2. Hierarchical GA
The ATM design problem was considered as a parameter
estimation problem. GAs has been used in a hierarchical
approach to optimize the ATM network. The proposed novel
HGA optimization problem is shown in Figure 1. There are
two levels were performed to produce an optimal ATM
network design. The two levels are evolved in parallel. The
fitness score of the individuals in each level depends on the
performance of the chromosomes in both levels.
Figure 1. Hierarchical GAs in two levels
2.1 GA Level 1
GA is used to install a new network with a set of network
links which satisfies the constraints demand criterion and
has a minimum delay over the network. In this level, a new
network structure is evolved which has all nodes of the
original network and a subset of its links. The network
configuration must be implemented subject to the constraints
defined in Equations 1 and 2.
f ≤ C × 95% (1)
i i
Thus, the maximum flow value (fi ) for link (i) in Equation 1
is restricted not to exceed 95% of the capacity (Ci ).
n Each network link is characterized by a set of attributes;
Throughput ≥ 0.5 × ∑ C
i
(2)
i =1
The throughput of the network is allowed not to be less than
half the sum of all capacities. We must realize that the
boundary range of the genes values is based on the link ID of
the ATM experiments and the gene redundancy must be
eliminated. A gene duplicate leads to a link duplicate, which
leads to the increase of the network delay.
Vol. 2, No. 3, March 2010
2.2 GA Level 2
GA is optimized to find the best value of (fi ) such that the
overall delay is minimized. The computed network delay is
then returned to GA Level 1 to be considered as the new
fittest value. The fitness criterion, in this level, is considered
as the mean time delay. The mean delay is computed as in
Equation 3.
1 N fi N
T = ∑ , θ = ∑ fi (3)
θ i =1 C
i − fi i =1
where θ is the total traffic over the network, N is the number
of links. This idea was presented in [16].
3. Case Study: ATM Network
There are two sets of customers to be considered while
planning the ATM network design:
1) the user who uses the services through the network. The
network should meet the user’s needs in terms of quality
of service. The flow assignment and the capacities links
are the two main entities affecting the cost of the ATM
network. The maximum flow assignment must be tested,
and the network should maintain a high capacity.
2) the company which will be building the ATM network
and maintaining it. The network operation should be as
cost effective as possible for both installation and
maintenance. Minimizing the total cost is mainly an
important matter of selecting the best design of ATM
network.
The schematic diagram for the ATM under study with all
specified links and capacities is shown in Figure 2.
Figure 2. The ATM Network Topology
This ATM network was presented in [17], [18]. The network
has 7 nodes with 14 links. The links and capacities for each
node are presented in Table 1.
these attributes for a given link (i) form the flow (fi ) and the
capacity (Ci ). (fi ) is defined as the effective quantity of
information transported by link (i). The capacity (Ci ) is
defined as the measure of the maximal quantity of
information that can be transmitted by link (i).
58 (IJCNS) International Journal of Computer and Network Security,
Vol. 2, No. 3, March 2010

Table 1: ATM network capacity of each link selection method is the fitness assignment. Each individual
in the selection pool receives a reproduction probability
Links
Start Node End Node Link Capacity
depending on its objective value. This fitness is used for the
ID selection step afterwards. Stochastic uniform selection
1 1 4 150 mechanism is considered in this work.
2 1 6 150 Reproduction: This step increases the number of good
chromosomes in the next generation. This scheme
3 1 3 225
determines how the new individuals will be assimilated into
4 1 2 225
the population. Many number of reproduction operators were
5 2 3 150 presented in the literature [3], [7].
6 2 6 150 Crossover: This procedure exchanges genes between the
7 2 5 150 parents. Two chromosomes are randomly selected from the
8 3 4 150 population as parent chromosomes. Two new chromosomes
with the genes from both the parent chromosomes are
9 3 5 150
obtained. A scattered function for the crossover is considered
10 4 6 150
in this work.
11 6 5 150 Mutation: This step is used to have a new chromosome
12 5 7 150 which differs from the chromosomes in the population. A
13 6 7 150 chromosome is randomly selected as the mutated
14 4 7 150 chromosome. In this paper, the mutation type is Gaussian
function with Scale equal 1 and Shrink equal 1.
Fitness Evaluation: The fitness function is computed by
4. Problem Formulation
using the mean time delay as given in Equation 3. This
The optimization problem of the ATM network is fitness is based on a given objective function on level 2
implemented in a hierarchical manner. Two levels of GAs which is the minimum time delay over the evolved network
are used. in level 1. Each chromosome in the population is assigned a
• GAs Level 1 is used to select the best network topology specific value associated with the gene arrangement in order
and forward it to GA Level 2. The ATM network should to select the best individuals. Finally, the effectiveness of the
be effectively connected such that at least half the proposed algorithm was tested based on the GA utilization.
network bandwidth is busy. The GA utilization criterion can be computed as given in
• GAs level 2 computes the minimum delay over the Equation 4.
network. In GAs level 2 we determine the (fi ) parameters f
for each network link (i). Utilizatio n = i (4)
HGA requires number of steps for the problem formulation C
i
as shown below: Improving GA utilization in all cases will increase the flow
Encoding Mechanism: This step is used to encode the assignment of the links for the ATM network. HGA requires
variables of the optimization problem in terms of genes. In number of tuning parameters in accordance with GA
this work, a table was created for all pairs of links optimization. We run GA using various population sizes in
combination. The links in the table correspond to the virtual the two levels of HGA. The corresponding results of the
paths included between pair of nodes. In the proposed network topology for the various population sizes are shown
algorithm each link is identified by an ID number which is in Figures 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10 and 11.
in accordance to the row number in the table. The proposed
GAs will have 14 genes. Each gene corresponds to a link
and each link has an identified (Ci ).
Initialization: This step uses the encoding method to create
a random initial population by randomly generating a
suitable number of chromosomes. In this paper, the
chromosome length equals to the number of links in the
original network.
Number of Populations: Various population sizes were used
while running GA in each level.
Selection Mechanism: Selection schemes helps in
determining the convergence properties of GAs. A selection Figure 3. Network Topology evolved by Pop. Size L1 = 10
scheme in GAs is known as the process which favorably and Pop. Size L2 = 25
selects better individuals in the current population for the
mating pool [19], [20]. The selection method determines
how individuals are chosen for mating. The first step in the
 (IJCNS) International Journal of Computer and Network Security, 59
Vol. 2, No. 3, March 2010

Figure 8. Network Topology evolved by Pop. Size L1 = 30

Figure 4. Network Topology evolved by Pop. Size L1 = 10 and Pop. Size L2 = 75. Delay time = 10.7585
and Pop. Size L2 = 50. Delay time = 11.0223

Figure 9. Network Topology evolved by Pop. Size L1 = 50

and Pop. Size L2 = 25. Delay time = 10.76630
Figure 5. Network Topology evolved by Pop. Size L1 = 10
and Pop. Size L2 = 75. Delay time = 10.76282

Figure 10. Network Topology evolved by Pop. Size L1 = 50

and Pop. Size L2 = 50. Delay time = 10.7643

Figure 6. Network Topology evolved by Pop. Size L1 = 30

and Pop. Size L2 = 25. Delay time = 10.8009

Figure 11. Network Topology evolved by Pop. Size L1 = 30

Figure 7. Network Topology evolved by Pop. Size L1 = 30 and Pop. Size L2 = 75
and Pop. Size L2 = 50. Delay time = 10.7581
60 (IJCNS) International Journal of Computer and Network Security,
Vol. 2, No. 3, March 2010

The HGA related parameters used in the experiments were was presented to show the performance of the proposed
determined as shown in Table 2. HGA algorithm. Figure 12 shows the convergence process of
GAs with various population sizes for both level 1 and level
Table 2: Parameters evolved for GA-based experiments 2.

Operator Type

Creation function random initial with uniform

distribution

Initial range lower bound is 1 and upper bound

is 95% of line capacity

Selection mechanism Stochastic uniform

Crossover type Scattered function

Gaussian function with
Mutation type Scale = 1 and Shrink = 1

Maximum generations 50

5. Experimental Results
From the developed results, the proposed HGA was able to
provide number of ATM network with various topologies.
Having a closer look to each developed structure, we can Figure 12. The convergence process of GAs with various
find that all evolved network have seven links except one population sizes
network which has 8 links (see Figure 4). This network has
the maximum delay which is expected since the number of The algorithm converges to the optimal solution at ”high”
links increased. The evolved network were able to achieve speed and finds a good solution in less than 20 generations
the required criteria which is specified by the designer (i.e. of running. Moreover, the algorithm reached a solution with
increasing the network throughput to at least 50% of the the lowest (i.e. optimal) delay in most cases. In some cases,
network capacity and manage the traffic to be with the algorithm finds the optimal solution very quickly;
minimum delay). The developed network could be unreliable however, there are some cases where longer convergence
in some sense because the reduced number of links may times are observed in order to obtain the optimal solution.
cause a problem if failure occurs in a link. This could be
another objective to investigate in the future. Of course the 6. Conclusions and Future Work
best reliable network will be the fully connected network. A Hierarchical Genetic Algorithms (HGA) based
This will be, of course, a very expensive network to optimization mechanism for Asynchronous Transfer Mode
implement. The computed delay times for various population (ATM) network has been formulated. Minimizing the total
sizes of the GA in levels 1 and 2 are shown in Table 3. cost is mainly the purpose of the proposed approach,
subsequently; the work addresses the maximum allowable
flow assignment in each link while simultaneously keeping
Table 3: Delay time for various Pop. sizes of GA levels the overall delay within the minimum acceptable range. It
can be inferred from the results obtained that ATM network
Description GAs level 1 GAs level 2 Delay time
design using HGA produces good network plans in terms of
Pop. Size 10 25 10.81690 network throughput and GA utilization. Also, it allows more
Pop. Size 10 50 11.02230 flexibility in the traffic management, and less complexity of
Pop. Size 10 75 10.76282 the planning task. It is suggested to improve the current
Pop. Size 30 25 10.80090
work by adding new issues related to dynamic capacity
allocation within the network. Additionally, improvement
Pop. Size 30 50 10.75810
can be achieved if using Parallel Genetic Algorithms
Pop. Size 30 75 10.75850 (PGAs). This way the computation time can be reduced to a
Pop. Size 50 25 10.76630 reasonable computational effort.
Pop. Size 50 50 10.76430
Pop. Size 50 75 10.76006 References
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Authors Profile
Alaa Sheta received his B.E., M.Sc.
degrees in Electronics and Communication
Engineering from Faculty of Engineering,
Cairo University in 1988 and 1994,
respectively. A. Sheta received his Ph.D.
degree from the Computer Science
Department, School of Information Technology and Engineering,
George Mason University, Fairfax, VA, USA. His published work
exceeds 70 publications between book chapters, journal papers,
conferences and invited talks. His research interests include
Evolutionary Computation, Computer Networks, Image Processing,
Software Reliability and Software Cost Estimation. Currently, Dr.
Sheta is a Professor with the College of Computers and Information
Systems and the Director of the Vision and Robotics Laboratory at
Taif University, Taif, Saudi Arabia. He is on leave from the
Electronics Research Institute (ERI), Giza, Egypt.
Malik Braik received his B.Sc. degree in
Electrical Engineering from Faculty of
Engineering, Jordan University of Science
and Technology in 2000. Five years later,
M. Braik received his M.Sc in Computer
Science from Department of Information
Technology, Al-Balqa Applied University, Jordan in 2005. His
research interests focus on Evolutionary Computation, Image
Processing, Data Security and Computer Networks. Currently,
Braik is working with the Department of Information Technology,
Prince Abdullah Bin Ghazi Faculty of Science and Information
Technology, Al-Balqa Applied University, Al-Salt, Jordan.
62 (IJCNS) International Journal of Computer and Network Security,
Vol. 2, No. 3, March 2010

Mohammad Salameh received his B.E.

degree in Computer Science from Faculty of
King Abdullah II School for Information
Technology (KASIT), University Of Jordan
in 2005, and in 2009 Mohammad received
his M.Sc. degree in Computer Science from
Faculty of Graduate Studies and Scientific Research, Al-Balqa`
Applied University in 2009. Mohammad Salameh is a joiner
researcher; his research interest fields are Robotics Design and
Programming, Evolutionary Computation, Computer Networks,
Image Processing. Mohammad is a Robotics Trainer and
Programmer in the National Education Center for Robotics
(NECR), King Hussein Foundation, Amman, Jordan.