[2603.04353] A Constrained RL Approach for Cost-Efficient Delivery of Latency-Sensitive Applications

Computer Science > Networking and Internet Architecture arXiv:2603.04353 (cs) [Submitted on 4 Mar 2026] Title:A Constrained RL Approach for Cost-Efficient Delivery of Latency-Sensitive Applications Authors:Ozan Aygün, Vincenzo Norman Vitale, Antonia M. Tulino, Hao Feng, Elza Erkip, Jaime Llorca View a PDF of the paper titled A Constrained RL Approach for Cost-Efficient Delivery of Latency-Sensitive Applications, by Ozan Ayg\"un and 5 other authors View PDF HTML (experimental) Abstract:Next-generation networks aim to provide performance guarantees to real-time interactive services that require timely and cost-efficient packet delivery. In this context, the goal is to reliably deliver packets with strict deadlines imposed by the application while minimizing overall resource allocation cost. A large body of work has leveraged stochastic optimization techniques to design efficient dynamic routing and scheduling solutions under average delay constraints; however, these methods fall short when faced with strict per-packet delay requirements. We formulate the minimum-cost delay-constrained network control problem as a constrained Markov decision process and utilize constrained deep reinforcement learning (CDRL) techniques to effectively minimize total resource allocation cost while maintaining timely throughput above a target reliability level. Results indicate that the proposed CDRL-based solution can ensure timely packet delivery even when existing baselines fall short, and it ...