Numerical results comparing the proposed methodology to Integer Programming techniques and heuristics from the literature are presented showing the advantages of the technique. The proposed methodology was applied on 4 different size networks based on spare capacity optimization criteria and it was found that it achieved solutions that were on average 9.3% better than the optimal solution of the IP design that is based on link-restoration. It also achieved solutions that were on average 22.2 % better than the previous heuristic SLPA.
The proposed methodology is very scalable. It was applied on networks with different sizes ranging from a 13-node network to a 70-node network. It was able to solve the 70-node network in less than one hour on a Pentium II PC. The curve-fitting of the empirical execution time of the methodology was found to be O(n3).