Automation of Computer Network Re-design with Servers Placement Considerations

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An Automated Network Redesign Tool (ANRT), which consists of Genetic Algorithms (GA) in its core, is introduced in this research. The presented ANRT is a software program that was written in C++ and used to input any given network structure with its corresponding link weights, and will process an output network which relatively has an overall minimum routing costs within its nodes. In this study, we introduce the “Modified Scale-Free network model”, which is designed based on both the CISCO 3-layered network structure and the scale-free network model. The modified scale-free network has been tested and compared to other network structures (random, small-world and scale-free). It has resulted in significant enhancement in terms of overall minimum routing costs after applying the redesign process. It showed that the modified scale-free network is the best choice when designing a network from scratch and will result in minimum routing costs in comparison to other network structures. On the other hand, a redesign process is normally applied on an existing network, therefore, the proposed ANRT is based on the concept of manipulating the existing network structure and links in order to result in overall minimum routing costs while maintaining the existing structure. In this study, three network examples (random, small-world and scale-free) have been tested using the ANRT and the results showed an overall minimum routing costs reduction by 16.56 %, 36.83 %, and 19.28% respectively. The random networks have resulted in smaller improvement due to their structure, and the scale-free network has become a modified scale-free network after applying the ANRT. The proposed ANRT has proven to be efficient and accurate in terms of re-designing any given network while utilizing existing structure and resulting in better overall routing costs.