Using Collective Intelligence to Route Internet Traffic

David H. Wolpert, Kagan Tumer, Jeremy Frank

Abstract: A COllective INtelligence (COIN) is a set of interacting reinforce(cid:173) ment learning (RL) algorithms designed in an automated fashion so that their collective behavior optimizes a global utility function. We summarize the theory of COINs, then present experiments us(cid:173) ing that theory to design COINs to control internet traffic routing. These experiments indicate that COINs outperform all previously investigated RL-based, shortest path routing algorithms.