Uniqueness of Performance Variables in Static Load Balancing

Abstract

Important performance optimization problems in the communication networks and distributed computer systems may include the problem of how to obtain the optimal routing (or flow assignment) policy for sending data through the communication channels and the problem of how to balance the processing of jobs among processors (i.e. static load balancing). For example, an optimal static routing policy determines the rate at which data flow through each path connecting a given pair of origin and destination points, so as to minimize the overall mean data transmission time. We can regard the combination of such rates as the solution of the optimization problem. These optimization problems have close relations to the optimal traffic assignment problems in the transportation science [Daf72, Mag84].