Evaluation of IP over WDM Network Architectures

The commonly used IP-backbone network architecture of today is IP/ATM/SDH/WDM. This architecture has many redundant functionalities and is not optimized to transport IP traffic. New approaches for simplified network architectures try to eliminate redundant functionalities and to decrease the protocol overhead and thereby transport IP as efficiently as possible over WDM-based optical networks. EURESCOM project P918 Integration of IP-over-optical networks: networking and management investigated scenarios for optimized IP transport in WDM-based backbone networks. In this paper, three architectures, namely Gigabit Ethernet, Packet over Sonet/SDH and Dynamic Packet Transport are investigated and evaluated as an alternative to the IP/ATM/SDH/WDM architecture.