Case Study: ANetworkDesignProblem

Submitted: 20 Feb 2008

Operations Research Topics:

Application Areas:

Contents

• Problem Description
• StudentTasks

Problem Description

THE NETWORK DESIGN PROBLEM

Adapted from a real world problem

Before undertaking this case study you must (at least) read the DataNetworkFlows case study to learn about the components that make up Storage Area Networks (SANs).

The company that commissioned the initial research on routing their data (see DataNetworkFlows) has decided to add another storage device (Device C) to their network. They have also performed some extensive data traffic measurement and determined the actual data flow requirements they need to support. These flows are shown in Table 1.

They estimate they will need either an extra hub or an extra switch or some combination of the 3 hubs and 2 switches. They commissioned the same network consultant to design their new network for them. He finished the job, but left for his honeymoon before writing a management summary or documenting his work. The files he left are contained in:

??? LINK ??? san_design.zip

The company want to use these files to find the optimal SAN design that will support their data flow requirements.

For more detail see A Mixed-Integer Approach to Storage Area Network Design using Generic Network Components, O’Sullivan and Walker Engineering Science Technical Report 626, March 2006

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Student Tasks

STUDENT TASKS