Balancing Cost and Completion Time Through Variable Paths With Variable Bandwidth in HPNs

Liudong Zuo, Zhong Chen, Pan Lai

Abstract: In various scientific domains, the continuous generation of vast datasets necessitates their swift transfer over long distances for collaborative data storage and analysis. This is often facilitated by high-performance networks (HPNs) that provide bandwidth reservation services for efficient and reliable data transfer. Typically, the primary objective of data transfer is to achieve the earliest completion time (ECT). However, users may also aim to minimize the financial costs associated with these transfers. Balancing these competing requirements can be complex. This paper examines the trade-off between ECT and cost in data transfers that utilize bandwidth reservation on variable paths with variable bandwidth within dedicated HPNs. We focus on two types of bandwidth reservation requests and their scheduling: (i) minimizing data transfer costs while adhering to a transfer deadline, and (ii) achieving ECT within a specified maximum cost. We demonstrate that both problems are NP-complete and subsequently propose heuristic algorithms to address them. Extensive simulations are conducted to demonstrate their effectiveness and efficiency.