A protocol for piggy-backing on Markov based wavelength reservation in WDM optical networks

During lightpath establishment in WDM optical networks, two important steps, other than routing, are: wavelength selection and wavelength reservation. If two or more lightpaths select the same wavelength, wavelength collision occurs. The basic reason for collision is the non-availability of the updated wavelength usage information. Markov based wavelength selection guesses a unique wavelength in advance, where each node periodically broadcasts its adjoining link usage information at a regular interval T. But, at any intermediate time t (0<t<T), all nodes use the old update which is already outdated by time t. If T is large, the problem becomes severe. To get around this problem without introducing any extra overhead, we propose a novel technique where the normal control packets, passing through the relevant nodes during [0,T], can be leveraged to carry the desired link state information. This may allow us even to increase the value of T (thereby reducing broadcast overhead), when control packets are frequent in the network. We apply the proposed modification to our previous work on Markov selection Split Reservation Protocol (MSRP) and call the modified protocol Fast updated MSRP (FMSRP). In fast update, we “piggy-back” normal control packets with link usage information, in addition to the usual periodic broadcasting of the same at every T. It obviously increases the chance for the nodes to get the latest information of link usage. We have simulated FMSRP and compared it with MSRP and also with another current best protocol (i.e., Markov based Backward Reservation Protocol) to show that the blocking probability for FMSRP improves considerably over them in some regions of offered load.