Routing in Telecommunications Networks with ``Smart'' Ant-Like Agents

A simple mechanism is presented, based on ant-like agents, for routing and load balancing in telecommunications networks, following the initial works of Appleby and Stewart (1994) and Schoonderwoerd et al. (1997). In the present work, agents are very similar to those proposed by Schoonderwoerd et al. (1997), but are supplemented with a simplified dynamic programming capability, initially experimented by Gu\'erin (1997) with more complex agents, which is shown to significantly improve the network's relaxation and its response to perturbations.