Method, apparatus and machine readable medium for traffic engineering in a communications network having quality of service flows and best effort flows

A method of traffic engineering in a communications network having a plurality of Quality of Service (QoS) flows each having one or more QoS demands and a plurality of Best Effort (BE) flows each without any QoS demands, the method comprising:

• determining jointly optimized flow allocations on links for at least a subset of the QoS flows and BE flows by jointly optimizing a first network configuration parameter relating to the allocation of the BE flows and a second network configuration parameter relating to the allocation of the QoS flows taking into account flow conservation constraints of the QoS flows and the BE flows, constraints of the communications network and a relative weighting allocated to the first network configuration parameter and the second network configuration parameter;
• and
• notifying at least one network component in the communications network of the determined flow allocations for each of the QoS flows and BE flows.

A non-transitory machine readable medium having tangibly stored thereon executable instructions that, when executed by a processor of a traffic engineering server, cause the traffic engineering server to perform a method of traffic engineering (TE) server for allocating traffic in a communications network having Quality of Service (QoS) flows each having one or more QoS demands and a plurality of Best Effort (BE) flows each without any QoS demands, the processor being configured for:

• determining jointly optimized paths and respective flow allocations for at least a subset of the QoS flows and BE flows by jointly optimizing a first network configuration parameter relating to the allocation of the BE flows and a second network configuration parameter relating to the allocation of the QoS flows taking into account constraints of the communications network and a relative weighting allocated to the first network configuration parameter and the second network configuration parameter;
• and
• notifying at least one network component in the communications network of the jointly optimized paths and respective flow allocations for each of the QoS flows and BE flows.

A non-transitory machine readable medium having tangibly stored thereon executable instructions that, when executed by a processor of a traffic engineering server, cause the traffic engineering server to perform a method of traffic engineering (TE) server for allocating traffic in a communications network having Quality of Service (QoS) flows each having one or more QoS demands and a plurality of Best Effort (BE) flows each without any QoS demands, the processor being configured for:

• determining jointly optimized flow allocations on links for at least a subset of the QoS flows and BE flows by jointly optimizing a first network configuration parameter relating to the allocation of the BE flows and a second network configuration parameter relating to the allocation of the QoS flows, constraints of the communications network and a relative weighting allocated to the first network configuration parameter and the second network configuration parameter;
• and
• notifying at least one network component in the communications network of the determined flow allocations for each of the QoS flows and BE flows.