The BMBF-project Eibone focused on the investigation and development of fundamentals for an efficient, robust and reliable communication network, which should satisfy the requirements for bandwith and service of the 21st century. The main emphasis of Eibone was on the backbone of a future broad-band communication network.

Classical services such as telephony, TV and Internet are increasingly offered via the same network infrastructure (triple play), which is usually organized in several network layers (e.g., IP over SDH over WDM). When planning and dimensioning such (multi-layer) networks one has to face restrictions that originate from the used technologies and hardware. The goal is a network with minimal setup- and operational costs ensuring reliability and robustness. The available resources should be optimally exploited.

Within Eibone a variety of research groups were working on different aspects of communication networks (optical transmission techniques, fiber technologies, protocols, ...). Our main focus was on planning and evaluating multi-layer network-architectures.

The Konrad Zuse Zentrum has developed a series of increasingly abstract models, from technical system models to sophisticated mathematical models, which are used in a planning cycle to optimize multi-layer networks. In several case studies it was shown that central design questions for layered network architectures can be answered using this approach. Based on the reference networks defined in Eibone, the influence of various planning parameters on the total design cost was investiagted. This includes a comparison of point-to-point vs. transparent optical networks, different traffic distributions, and different interface types.

A main aspect of the research at ZIB was the integrated planning of several network layers. Only this approach enables the evaluation and comparison of different network configurations. Several theoretical and algorithmical fundamentals have been established in this direction. An important focus was on methods that improve dual bounds on the total network cost, which helps to estimate the quality of given solutions.

Publications

2009
Branch-and-cut techniques for solving realistic two-layer network design problems Graphs and Algorithms in Communication Networks, Springer Berlin Heidelberg, pp. 95-118, 2009 Arie M.C.A. Koster, Sebastian Orlowski, Christian Raack, Georg Baier, Thomas Engel, Pietro Belotti BibTeX
Efficient Integrated Backbone
2008
Integer programming approaches to access and backbone IP-network planning Modeling, Simulation and Optimization of Complex Processes, Proceedings of the 3rd International Conference on High Performance Scientific Computing, March 6-10, Hanoi, Vietnam, pp. 87-110, 2008 (preprint available as ) Andreas Bley, Thorsten Koch BibTeX
Efficient Integrated Backbone
2007
Capacitated network design using general flow-cutset inequalities Proceedings of the INOC 2007, Spa, Belgium, also ZIB Report ZR-07-14, 2007 (preprint available as ) Christian Raack, Arie M.C.A. Koster, Sebastian Orlowski, Roland Wessäly BibTeX
Efficient Integrated Backbone
On the strength of cut-based inequalities for capacitated network design polyhedra ZIB-Report 07-08 Christian Raack, Arie M.C.A. Koster, Roland Wessäly PDF
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Efficient Integrated Backbone
Routing and Capacity Optimization for IP Networks Doctoral thesis, Technische Universität Berlin, martin Grötschel, Daniel Bienstock (Advisors), 2007, ISBN: 978-3-86727-281-0 Andreas Bley PDF
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Efficient Integrated Backbone
Routing and Capacity Optimization for IP networks ZIB-Report 07-33 (Appeared in: Operations Research Proceedings 2007. J. Kalcsics, S. Nickel (eds.) Springer 2008, pp. 9-16) Andreas Bley PDF
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Efficient Integrated Backbone
SNDlib 1.0--Survivable Network Design Library ZIB-Report 07-15 (A shortened version appeared in: Proceedings of International Network Optimization Conference (INOC 2007), Spa, Belgien, April 2007) Sebastian Orlowski, Michal Pioro, Artur Tomaszewski, Roland Wessäly PDF
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Efficient Integrated Backbone
Two-layer Network Design by Branch-and-Cut featuring MIP-based Heuristics Proceedings of the INOC 2007, Spa, Belgium, also ZIB Report ZR-06-47, 2007 (preprint available as ZIB-Report 06-47) Sebastian Orlowski, Arie M.C.A. Koster, Christian Raack, Roland Wessäly PDF (ZIB-Report)
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Efficient Integrated Backbone
2006
Availability and Cost Based Evaluation of Demand-wise Shared Protection ZIB-Report 06-15 (Appeared in: Proceedings 7th ITG-Workshop on Photonic Networks 2006, VDE-Verl., pp. 161-168) Ralf Hülsermann, Monika Jäger, Arie M.C.A. Koster, Sebastian Orlowski, Roland Wessäly, Adrian Zymolka PDF
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Efficient Integrated Backbone
2005
Employing Mixed-Integer Rounding in Telecommunication Network Design Master's thesis, 2005 Christian Raack PDF
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Efficient Integrated Backbone
Employing Mixed-Integer Rounding in Telecommunication Network Design Master's thesis, TU Berlin, 2005 Christian Raack BibTeX
Efficient Integrated Backbone
2003
Demand-wise Shared Protection for Meshed Optical Networks ZIB-Report 03-24 (A rev. version appeared in: Journal of Network and Systems Management 13:1 (2005) 35-55. Appeared in: Proceedings of DRCN 2003, the Fourth International Workshop on the Design of Reliable Communication Networks, October 19-22 (2003) Banff, Canada. Pp. 85-92) Arie M.C.A. Koster, Adrian Zymolka, Monika Jäger, Ralf Hülsermann, Christoph Gerlach PDF
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Efficient Integrated Backbone