A Time-Path Scheduling Problem (TPSP) for Aggregating Large Data Files from Distributed Databases using an Optical Burst-Switched Network

Abstract — We consider the problem of aggregating large data files from distributed databases and address the corresponding challenges involved from a network architecture perspective. We model this problem as one of identifying a time-path schedule (TPS) in a graph representation of the network. We prove that the TPS problem (TPSP) is NP-complete. We then propose a Mixed Integer Linear Programming (MILP)-based approach and three heuristics – Longest-File-First (LFF), Disjoint-Paths (DP), and Most-Distant-File-First (MDFF) – to solve TPSP. I