Optimal Scheduling Algorithms for Cost-Effective Bandwidth Reservation in HPNs

Vast amounts of data are continually being produced in various scientific fields. Once these large datasets are generated, they often require rapid transfer over long distances using bandwidth reservation services provided by high-performance networks (HPNs) dedicated to collaborative data storage and analysis. The primary goal of data transfer is typically to achieve the earliest completion time (ECT), but users may also seek to minimize financial costs associated with the transfer. Balancing these differing requirements can be challenging. In this paper, we explore the trade-off between ECT and cost in data transfers that use bandwidth reservation on variable paths with fixed bandwidth within dedicated HPNs. Our investigation focuses on two types of bandwidth reservation requests (BRRs) and their scheduling: (i) minimizing data transfer cost while meeting a data transfer deadline, and (ii) achieving ECT while meeting a specified maximum cost. To optimize the scheduling of both types of BRRs, we propose two novel algorithms and conduct extensive simulations to demonstrate their effectiveness and efficiency.