Managing congestion and traffic flow by considering the minimization of link utilization values

A method of managing traffic flow across links of an information network comprising:

• receiving a demand to route network traffic;
• determining a demand size of the demand;
• determining a routing procedure associated with the demand;
• calculating a cost metric for each of a plurality of links of a network, the cost metric for each link being associated with information comprising the routing procedure and a link utilization, the link utilization being a ratio of link capacities;
• and
• selecting a path to route network traffic with consideration to minimizing the maximum value of link utilization based on the calculated cost metric for each of the plurality of links.

A computer readable medium including computing instructions for managing traffic flow across links of an information network, the instructions comprising:

• monitoring traffic demands from a source node of an information network to a destination node of the network, including bandwidths associated with each of the traffic demands;
• determining for each traffic demand and for a given link of the network, that portion of the bandwidth associated with each traffic demand which portion is provided by the given link;
• determining a maximum value of link utilization among all links of the network, where link utilization is defined as the amount of bandwidth used by all traffic demands routed through a given link with respect to a total capacity of the link;
• calculating a cost metric for each link of the network based on information comprising the traffic demand and maximum value of link utilization;
• selecting a path with consideration to minimizing the maximum value of link utilization based on each cost metric;
• and
• routing the traffic demands across the path.

A computer readable medium including computing instructions for managing traffic flow across links of an information network, the instructions comprising:

• receiving a demand to route network traffic;
• determining a demand size of the demand;
• determining a routing procedure associated with the demand;
• calculating a cost metric for each of a plurality of links of a network;
• the cost metric for each link being associated with information comprising the routing procedure and a link utilization, the link utilization being a ratio of link capacities;
• and
• selecting a path with consideration to minimizing a maximum utilization value of link utilization to route network traffic based on the calculated cost metric for each of the plurality of links.