I am researching for ways to do network analysis or routing optimization with open source GIS. ArcGIS currently has an extension for this called Network Analyst but would like to keep my analysis with open source resources. In short I am looking to see if any open source GIS has some type of TSP tools. My current application is based on DotSpatial but that framework doesn't seem to have any of that functionality.
What I do have is a point featureset with all the cities of interest. The problem will include the start city and the end city. I would like to see if its possible to have GIS determine possible ways to connect the two within numeric and spatial restrictions. Say for example there can be no more than 3 inner connections and the connections have to stay within a football shape created between the start city and end city. Or maybe the top three shortest paths between the two end points. These are fuzzy restrictions right now but just want to see if there are any libraries out there that could do something like this.