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Virtual Path (VP) Assignment is an important resource management activity in ATM networks. By using the VP concept, the logical layout of the network can be administered to minimize the total network cost to the provider. We formulate the VP Assignment problem as a constrained optimization problem; the objective function to be minimized reflects processing/control costs at nodes and transmission costs between nodes. The quality of service requirements and overall throughput of the network are taken into consideration in the solution process as constraints. Since the solution space is complex, we develop a heuristic algorithm based on descent methods to reach a "near-optimal" VP configuration for a given physical network and traffic demand. The Multi-Rate Loss Network model is used in the calculation of connectionlevel blocking probabilities. Results for static connection-routing are presented, for various forms of the objective function and constraints.

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