An Agent-Based Approach to Routing in Communications Networks with Swarm Intelligence

Ant colonies are distributed systems that, in spite of the simplicity of their individuals, present a highly structured social organization. When such ant agents are used to solve the adaptive routing problems in communications networks, surprisingly good properties in terms of flexibility and adaptability that are competitive with traditional routing algorithm can be achieved. In this paper, the distributed adaptive routing algorithms that explore the network and rapidly learn good routes based on simple biological ants are investigated. A forward routing algorithm we proposed will be analyzed on a simulated network and the robustness and scalability are proved on a dynamic scenario. Our algorithm can directly influence the throughput and average delays of information messages and, hence have an impact on the overall performance of the network.