## 5 Experiments
### Experiment 4: Static Splitting Factors with Stopping Criteria
#### 5.4.1 Time Criterion
Highlighted are the best (green) and worst (red) configurations. Empty cells indicate that all benign connections (90% of all connections) were saved. solutions for over 6K connection pools. For example, utilizing a splitting factor of 14 leads to complete solutions up until the number of connections becomes equal or greater than 8K where the succession rate diminishes to 97.8% or lower, depending on the considered connection pool. However, in case the simulation concludes with a partial solution, it is apparent that the resource utilization is reduced. Indicatively, using a splitting factor of 20, connection pools of 9K and 10K connections yielded partial solutions with 98.7% and 98.5% succession rates. Despite this, they spawned 1002 and 1010 nodes, which is slightly fewer than the 1040 and 1061 nodes spawned in the experiment of Section 5.2, where no criteria were applied. Contrarily, with reference to Figure 10 and Table 9, when considering a pollution factor of 5% none of the employed splitting factors achieve optimal solutions for every tested connection pool. Particularly, for small connection pools, i.e., 1K to 4K, splitting factors 2 to 10 and 20 indeed attain a complete solution. For medium-sized connection pools, spanning from 5K to 7K, only the splitting factor of 6 and 20 results in a complete solution, followed by the splitting factor of 10, which succeeds partially (94.8%) only for a connection pool of 7K. Finally, in connection pools ranging from 8K to 10K, a splitting factor of 20 attains an optimal solution when the number of connections equals 8K. However, for connection pools of 9K and 10K, the same factor achieves 82.2% and 81.3%, respectively, marking these as the least effective performances for these pool sizes. Notwithstanding, in the same scenario 1084 and 1090 nodes are spawned. Recall from the experiment with no criteria of Section 5.2, that the same strategy needs 1653 and 1953 nodes to reach a complete solution, which translates to \(\approx\)34% and 44% less resource utilization at the expense of sacrificing a percentage of 12.8% and 13.7% benign connections, respectively. Significantly, for the same connection pools, the best-performing splitting factor of 10 only sacrifices 0.3% and 0.6% of the benign connections, but with \(\approx\)23% and 31% fewer nodes spawned, compared to the brute force experiment of Section 5.2. The simulation resulted in analogous results when considering a pollution factor of 10%, as illustrated in Figure 10 and outlined Table 10. Remarkably, for small connection pools only splitting factors of 10, 12, and 14 do not attain complete solutions. For medium-sized connection pools, splitting factors of 6, 18, and 20 achieve optimal solutions for 5K connections, while for 6K to 7K connections, the splitting factor of 20 is the top performer obtaining an 88.9% success percentage. Finally, in connection pools ranging from 8K to 10K, in terms of the best performers, the results are identical with a pollution factor of 5%. Regarding resource utilization, the same observation was derived: suboptimal solutions lead to fewer nodes spawned. Indicatively, for a connection pool of 10K, the best-performing splitting factor of 10 sacrifices 3.6% of the benign connections, but with \(\approx\)57% less resource utilization. As for the worst-performing splitting factor of 20, it sacrifices 13% of the benign connections, but with \(\approx\)49% less resource utilization.