RESOURCE ALLOCATION USING TRAFFIC AGGREGABILITY AND FUTURE BANDWIDTH AVAILABILITY IN A NETWORK

Embodiments of the invention provides methods, apparatus, and media to allocate resources in a network. In one embodiment, the method comprises identifying a request to route a traffic flow based on a policy, and for the identified request, selecting a source and destination node from a plurality of alternatives, and a path between the source and destination nodes for the traffic flow. The source and destination nodes and the path are selected based on a gain function, where the selection comprises generating values of the gain function, each value being generated based on bandwidth availability for future bandwidth requests as well as aggregability of the traffic flow and other traffic flows determined using candidates from the plurality of node pair alternatives and the plurality of path alternatives. The method also includes routing the traffic flow between the selected source and destination nodes along the selected path in the network.