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Method for network capacity planning with proper accounting of spare capacity

Method for network capacity planning with proper accounting of spare capacity description/claims

This application is a continuation of U.S. patent application Ser. No. 10/750,314, filed Dec. 31, 2003 (currently allowed) which claims the benefit of U.S. Provisional Application No. 60/486,497 filed on Jul. 11, 2003, which is herein incorporated by reference.

The present invention relates generally to communication networks and, more particularly, to a method for capacity planning with proper accounting of spare capacity.

In traditional capacity planning methods, there is usually little spare capacity left in the network after each capacity planning horizon is executed. This is due to the fact that spare capacity shows up simply as cost and costs are being minimized in traditional capacity planning methods. Therefore, a network could run out of capacity in places soon after the current planning time horizon is over. This further leads to the needs to augment many of the network links in the very near future. Thus, such capacity planning method can minimize the current cost but at the expense of incurring a larger cost in the near future. In order to minimize the current cost, these methods end up proposing long routes for many of the circuits, e.g., a shorter route is not available because one of the required links does not have the necessary capacity. However, since additional capacity will eventually be added on all the links, these circuits with unnecessarily long routes will then show up as misrouted circuits and will need to be re-groomed. This involves extra operations cost as well as a hit, a brief service interruption, to the circuit. Furthermore, it also requires getting a customer's permission before a circuit can be re-groomed, which is a very time-consuming manual process.

To avoid the aforementioned shortcomings in the traditional capacity planning methods, the network must maintain an appropriate amount of spare on each link as it takes a fairly long lead-time to order new capacity and capacity is deployed in relatively large chunks. Therefore, a need exists for a method and apparatus for capacity planning with proper accounting of spare capacity within a network.

In one embodiment, the present invention improves upon the traditional capacity planning methods by introducing new factors in the optimization methods to properly account for the benefits of carrying the appropriate amount of capacity in the network. For example, the present invention defines a variable that represents the benefit of the spare capacity of a link. The notion of benefit is similar to the notion of a negative cost (of link augments). In this fashion, a new objective function is created that no longer simply minimizes the cost of all the capacity augments but instead accounts for the benefit of the spare capacity left in the network as well.

This new objective function does not suffer from the problems associated with traditional capacity planning methods. Long routes are discouraged because they lead to less spare capacity, a smaller (negative) value of the second term and, thus, higher value of the objective function. Augments no longer simply appear as a (large) cost. If they leave a fair amount of spare capacity behind then the cost of the augment is appropriately reduced. This would not leave the network with a small amount of spare capacity as in the prior art.

The teaching of the present invention can be readily understood by considering the following detailed description in conjunction with the accompanying drawings, in which:

FIG. 1 illustrates a block diagram of a communication network comprising a plurality of nodes and a plurality of links;

FIG. 2 illustrates a flowchart of a method for introducing new factors to properly account for the benefits of spare capacities in a network; and

FIG. 3 illustrates a high level block diagram of a general purpose computer suitable for use in performing the functions described herein.

To facilitate understanding, identical reference numerals have been used, where possible, to designate identical elements that are common to the figures.

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