Fulkerson and Ford's algorithm proved effective enough, but it often didn't produce the best possible flow: If other routes were cut off and suboptimal jams emerged, so be it.

Kyng's algorithm can be applied in such cases to calculate the optimal, lowest-cost traffic flow for any kind of network -- be it rail, road, water or the internet.

In brief Computer scientists at ETH Zurich have written a network flow algorithm that computes almost as fast as is mathematically possible. This algorithm computes the maximum traffic flow with ...