In today's burgeoning business environments, data frenetically pulses through massive interconnected networks as firms create, compile, and disseminate vast amounts of information. Organizations need to acquire the bandwidth that allows them to effectively share information. To acquire bandwidth, a firm agrees to pay a provider a fee, and the provider agrees to provide an acceptable quality bandwidth.Price of bandwidth depends on two parameters: size and duration of contracts. Size is the amount of bandwidth purchased, and duration is the length of the contract. Bandwidth prices have been declining over time. Therefore, managers deciding on contracts to cover a given planning horizon have to decide on the number of contracts to purchase, their bandwidth (size), and their lengths (duration) to minimize costs. This research analyzes bandwidth contracting decisions from a buyer's perspective. Historical data will be used to estimate bandwidth cost as a function of contract size and duration at a point in time, and to estimate bandwidth cost overtime. Both mathematical programming and evolutionary algorithms will be used to solve the problem under deterministic increasing bandwidth demand. In addition, simulation will be used with evolutionary algorithms to solve the problem under stochastic demand and prices.
