Joint scheduling and virtual topology design for sliding periodic traffic

Two possible approaches can be considered for solving the virtual topology design problem for periodic (multi-hour) traffic demands. The first approach attempts to design a static topology that can accommodate all the traffic variations over time. The second option is to determine an appropriate series of virtual topologies to accommodate the different traffic loads at different times. This can lead to some savings in terms of the number of transceivers needed, but it requires the use of costly reconfigurable switching equipment. So, strategies for stable virtual topology design have received considerable attention in recent years. However, all the works reported in the literature so far, focus on the fixed window scheduled traffic model, where the start and end times of the demands are known in advance. In this paper, we propose a new integrated approach using the more general sliding window model, for jointly scheduling the demands in time and designing a logical topology that can accommodate all the scheduled demands. The goal is to a find a suitable static topology that can handle fluctuations in the offered sub-wavelength traffic load, without requiring the use of reconfigurable optical switching equipment. We first present a comprehensive integer linear program (ILP) formulation for designing a cost-efficient, stable logical topology for time-varying demands, and then propose an integrated heuristic algorithm capable of handling larger networks. Simulation results demonstrate the advantages of the proposed approaches, not only compared to holding time unaware models, but also over the traditional fixed window model.     

Routing and wavelength assignment of scheduled lightpath demands

We present algorithms that compute the routing and wavelength assignment (RWA) for scheduled lightpath demands in a wavelength-switching mesh network without wavelength conversion functionality. Scheduled lightpath demands are connection demands for which the setup and teardown times are known in advance. We formulate separately the routing problem and the wavelength assignment problem as spatio-temporal combinatorial optimization problems. For the former, we propose a branch and bound algorithm for exact resolution and an alternative tabu search algorithm for approximate resolution. A generalized graph coloring approach is used to solve the wavelength assignment problem. We compared the proposed algorithms to an RWA algorithm that sequentially computes the route and wavelength assignment for the scheduled lightpath demands.     

Comparison of ILP formulations for the RWA problem

We present a review of the integer linear programming (ILP) formulations that have been proposed for the routing and wavelength assignment problem in WDM optical networks assuming asymmetrical traffic. We show that all formulations proposed under asymmetrical traffic assumptions, both link and path formulations, are equivalent in terms of the upper bound value provided by the optimal solution of their linear programming relaxation, although their number of variables and constraints widely differ. We propose improvements for some of the formulations that result in further reductions in the number of variables and constraints.Under the objective of minimizing the blocking rate, we propose an experimental comparison of the best lower and upper bounds that are available. We then discuss the easiness of exact ILP solution depending on the formulations. We observe that LP relaxation bounds often provide solutions with a value very close to the optimal ILP one. We solve exactly for the first time several RWA (Routing and Wavelength Assignment) realistic instances, including those proposed by Krishnaswamy and Sivarajan [R. Krishnaswamy, K. Sivarajan, Algorithms for routing and wavelength assignment based on solutions of LP-relaxation, IEEE Communications Letters 5 (10) (2001) 435–437], with a proof of the optimality.     

Sliding scheduled lightpath provisioning by mixed partition coloring in WDM optical networks

In WDM optical networks, lightpath provisioning for static, incremental and dynamic traffic model has been widely investigated. However, Internet connectivity services are increasingly showing a new kind of traffic type in the context of optical networks, i.e., sliding scheduled traffic, which does not have a rigid deadline and allows flexible sliding within a large time window. This new traffic type offers opportunity of more efficiently utilizing network resources to accommodate more traffic, and poses new challenges of exploiting the flexibility of scheduling time. In this paper, we formulate the static sliding scheduled lightpath demand (SSLD) provisioning problem as a mixed partition coloring model in which routing and wavelength assignment are conducted simultaneously in compliance with the allowed time window of each request. Then, we propose a novel one-step heuristic algorithm named as maximum conflict degree first conflict reducing (MCDF-CR) to solve the SSLD provisioning problem based on mixed partition coloring model. Simulation results show that our approach can improve wavelengths utilization compared to previous heuristics.     

Strategies for optimal logical topology design and traffic grooming

Traffic grooming techniques are used to combine low-speed data streams onto high-speed lightpaths with the objective of minimizing the network cost, or maximizing the network throughput. In this article, we present a complete suite of efficient Integer Linear Program (ILP) formulations for logical topology design and traffic grooming on mesh WDM networks. Our formulations can be easily modified to implement different objective functions and, contrary to previous formulations, our ILP formulation can be used to generate optimal solutions for practical sized networks with hundreds of requests. Our first set of formulations addresses the complete logical topology design traffic grooming problem, including RWA and traffic routing. The second set uses the simplifying assumption that RWA is not an issue. The last two sets address optimal traffic grooming alone, where the logical topology is already specified. We have studied these formulations, using simulation with networks having up to 30 nodes, and with hundreds and, in some cases, over a thousand low-speed data streams and have shown that the formulations are able to generate optimal solutions within a reasonable amount of time.     

Constrained light-tree design for WDM mesh networks with multicast traffic grooming

Multicast applications such as IPTV, video conferencing, telemedicine and online multiplayer gaming are expected to be major drivers of Internet traffic growth. The disparity between the bandwidth offered by a wavelength and the bandwidth requirement of a multicast connection can be tackled by grooming multiple low bandwidth multicast connections into a high bandwidth wavelength channel or light-tree. Light-trees are known to be especially suited for networks that carry ample multicast traffic. In this paper, we propose new algorithms to address the problem of multicast traffic grooming. In particular, an Integer Linear Programming (ILP) formulation is proposed for optimal assignments of hop constrained light-trees for multicast connections so that network throughput can be maximized. Hop constrained light-trees improve the scalability of the approach by reducing the search space of the ILP formulation. Since solving the ILP problem is very time consuming for realistically large networks, we are motivated to propose a heuristic algorithm with a polynomial complexity, called Dividable Light-Tree Grooming (DLTG) algorithm. This algorithm is based on grooming traffic to constrained light-trees and also divides a light-tree to smaller constrained light-trees on which traffic is groomed for better resource utilization. Simulations show that the proposed DLTG heuristic performs better than other algorithms. It achieves network throughputs which are very close to the ILP formulation results, but with far lower running times.     

Logical topology design for dynamic traffic grooming in WDM optical networks

Traffic grooming in optical networks refers to consolidation of subwavelength client connections onto lightpaths. Depending on whether client connections are given in advance or randomly arrive/depart, traffic grooming is classified as static and dynamic. Dynamic traffic grooming has been traditionally performed through establishing/releasing lightpaths online. In this paper, the authors propose an alternate approach to design a static logical topology a priori and then route randomly arriving client connections on it to avoid frequent lightpath setup/teardown. Two problems are considered: 1) minimize resource usage constrained by traffic blocking requirements and 2) maximize performance constrained by given resources. These are formulated as integer linear-programming (ILP) problems. The numerical results show that the resource usage dramatically decreases when the blocking requirement is relaxed, and the grooming performance slowly increases when given more resources. In addition, the number of ports at client nodes has more profound impact on traffic grooming than the number of wavelengths.     

EBvN: efficient BvN in multi-fiber/multi-wavelength overlaid-star optical networks

Overlaid-star networks with reservation-based scheduling could be appropriate networks for metro areas. The Birkhoff?Cvon Neumann (BvN) scheduling could be used at the core nodes of an overlaid network to schedule lossless traffic transmission among edge nodes. The common method is to schedule traffic separately for each wavelength channel, called separated BvN (SBvN) scheduling in this paper. However, SBvN cannot schedule all traffic demands, especially at high-traffic loads. In this paper, the BvN scheduling procedure is modified to efficiently schedule traffic in overlaid-star networks with multi-fiber/multi-wavelength architecture, called efficient BvN (EBvN). Instead of using one processor to schedule traffic on one wavelength channel in each core node, the proposed EBvN technique uses only one processor to schedule all traffic demands on all fibers/wavelength channels at the same time. Performance evaluation results under both uniform and non-uniform traffic distributions show that more traffic demands can be scheduled under EBvN compared with SBvN. In addition, the scheduling speed of EBvN is mostly faster than SBvN. Finally, EBvN can provide bound on the maximum scheduling time of EBvN. As a trade-off between scheduling time and residual traffic, EBvN with filling empty cells (EBvN_FEC) is proposed that can reduce residual traffic, but at the expense of slightly increasing scheduling time. EBvN_FEC is more effective than EBvN under non-uniform traffic distribution.     

Uniform waveband assignment in optical mesh networks

The cost of an optical network in wavelength division multiplexing (WDM) networks can be reduced using optical reconfigurable optical add/drop multiplexers (ROADMs), which allow traffic to pass through without the need for an expensive optical-electro-optical (O-E-O) conversion. Waveband switching (WBS) is another technique to reduce the network cost by grouping consecutive wavelengths and switching them together using a single port per waveband. WBS has attracted the attention of researchers for its efficiency in reducing switching complexity and therefore cost in WDM optical networks. In this paper, we consider the problem of switching wavelengths as non-overlapping uniform wavebands, per link, for mesh networks using the minimum number of wavebands. Given a fixed band size b _s , we give integer linear programming formulations and present a heuristic solution to minimize the number of ROADMs (number of wavebands) in mesh networks that support a given traffic pattern. We show that the number of ROADMs (or number of ports in band-switching cross-connects) can be reduced significantly in mesh networks with WBS compared to wavelength switching using either the ILP or the heuristic algorithm. We also examine the performance of our band assignment algorithms under dynamic traffic.     

Impact of Traffic Predictability on WDM EXC/OXC Network Performance

Recently several investigations in the field of multilayer traffic engineering (TE) mainly focusing on random traffic demands have been carried out. In this paper, we propose different TE strategies for EXC/OXC networks including electrical traffic grooming and lightpath rerouting. Unlike existing investigations that consider only random demands for TE, we consider simultaneously scheduled and random traffic demands. Scheduled demands correspond to guaranteed services whereas random demands correspond to best-effort services. In order to outline the impact of traffic predictability on TE efficiency, we introduce the new concept of semi-random traffic demand that corresponds to random demands with predictable holding time. For a given network and a given traffic scenario, numerical simulations outline the huge gap between the rejection ratio of random demands and that of semi-random demands. In order to improve the rejection ratio of random demands, we propose to proceed for such demands to a time limited resource reservation (TLRR). The choice of the value of reservation window Delta strongly depends on the arrival and life duration processes of random demands. We show that it is possible to achieve comparable rejection ratios for both random and semi-random demands     

Modeling the routing and spectrum allocation problem for flexgrid optical networks

Flexgrid optical networks are attracting huge interest due to their higher spectrum efficiency and flexibility in comparison with traditional wavelength switched optical networks based on the wavelength division multiplexing technology. To properly analyze, design, plan, and operate flexible and elastic networks, efficient methods are required for the routing and spectrum allocation (RSA) problem. Specifically, the allocated spectral resources must be, in absence of spectrum converters, the same along the links in the route (the continuity constraint) and contiguous in the spectrum (the contiguity constraint). In light of the fact that the contiguity constraint adds huge complexity to the RSA problem, we introduce the concept of channels for the representation of contiguous spectral resources. In this paper, we show that the use of a pre-computed set of channels allows considerably reducing the problem complexity. In our study, we address an off-line RSA problem in which enough spectrum needs to be allocated for each demand of a given traffic matrix. To this end, we present novel integer lineal programming (ILP) formulations of RSA that are based on the assignment of channels. The evaluation results reveal that the proposed approach allows solving the RSA problem much more efficiently than previously proposed ILP-based methods and it can be applied even for realistic problem instances, contrary to previous ILP formulations.     

Minimum cost dimensioning of ring optical networks

We consider the problem of traffic grooming of low-rate traffic circuits in WDM rings where circuits are associated with a set of heterogeneous granularities. While networks are no longer limited by transmission bandwidth, the key issue in WDM network design has evolved towards the processing capabilities of electronic switches, routers and multiplexers. Therefore, we focus here on traffic grooming with minimum interconnecting equipment cost. We first formulate the problem as an integer linear programming (ILP) or a mixed integer linear programming (MILP) problem depending on the design specifications: UPSR vs BLSR, fixed vs variable wavelength capacities, non-bifurcated vs bifurcated flows, wavelength continuity vs possible signal regeneration on a different wavelength. Considering the case study of the second SONET ring generation with MSPP like interconnection equipment, we define the cost by a function of the number of transport blades, taking into account that the number of MSPP transport blades makes up a significant portion of the overall network design cost. Using the CPLEX linear programming package, we next compare the optimal solutions of the ILP or MILP programs for different design assumptions, including the classical ring network design scheme with a single hub where the lightpaths directly connect the hub to all other nodes.     

WDM Network Design by ILP Models Based on Flow Aggregation

Planning and optimization of WDM networks has raised much interest among the research community in the last years. Integer linear programming (ILP) is the most used exact method to perform this task and many studies have been published concerning this issue. Unfortunately, many works have shown that, even for small networks, the ILP formulations can easily overwhelm the capabilities of today state-of-the-art computing facilities. So in this paper we focus our attention on ILP model computational efficiency in order to provide a more effective tool in view of direct planning or other benchmarking applications. Our formulation exploits flow aggregation and consists in a new ILP formulation that allows us to reach optimal solutions with less computational effort compared to other ILP approaches. This formulation applies to multifiber mesh networks with or without wavelength conversion. After presenting the formulation we discuss the results obtained in the optimization of case-study networks.     

Resource Planning for Dynamic Traffic Grooming in WDM Optical Networks

Dynamic traffic grooming in wavelength division multiplexing (WDM) optical networks refers to consolidating dynamically arriving subwavelength connections onto lightpaths. Most studies on dynamic traffic grooming focused on designing effective algorithms to achieve better performance (typically blocking probability) with given resources such as wavelengths and transponders. In this paper, we study the reverse problem: given the blocking requirement in dynamic traffic grooming, how to determine the resources needed to meet this requirement. We call it resource planning for dynamic traffic grooming. It is raised in a situation that after the initial deployment of optical networks, service providers often need to upgrade resources to accommodate increasing traffic demands. We formulate it as an ILP problem, and developed heuristics to solve this problem for large networks. Numerical results show that the heuristics can achieve good performance, and network resources increase slowly when requiring lower client call blocking probability.     

Worst-case analysis of dynamic wavelength allocation in opticalnetworks

This paper proposes algorithms for allocating wavelengths to connections (lightpaths) in optical wavelength division multiplexed networks, predominantly for ring topologies. A worst-case model is considered, where no blocking of lightpaths is allowed, and there are no assumptions made on the traffic arrival and holding times. The traffic is characterized only by its load L, which is the maximum number of lightpaths that can be present on any link, assuming no blocking. A dynamic traffic model is considered where requests to set up lightpaths arrive over time and, must be accommodated without rerouting existing lightpaths, and lightpaths may be terminated over time as well. For networks without wavelength conversion, we show that at least 0.5Llog ₂N wavelengths are required by any dynamic algorithm for rings of N nodes and present an algorithm that uses at most Llog₂ N+L wavelengths for rings and 2(L-1)log₂N for trees. We also study the worst-case behavior of the well-known first-fit algorithm, and show that it requires at most 2.52Llog₂N+5L wavelengths (small variants of these constants are proven as well). When limited wavelength conversion is allowed, we first show how to use expanders to insure no blocking in arbitrary topologies. Then, we present conversion patterns for rings with conversion degree d=2, which require Llog₂L+4L or 2Llog₂log₂L+4L wavelengths, thereby eliminating the dependence (that exists without wavelength conversion) between the number of wavelengths and N. We also consider different traffic models where lightpath setup requests arrive over time, but once set up, lightpaths are never taken down. For this model, the number of wavelengths needed is shown to be only max{0,L-d}+L for a conversion degree of d     

基于GMPLS的动态分布式WDM网状网路由选择算法研究

研究了在基于GMPLS的WDM网络中，当节点不具备波长变换能力并且配备有限个光收发器对时，如何为到达的业务请求建立标记交换路径（LSP）的问题。提出一种以跳数和带宽碎片要求为权重，合理分配带宽资源的新算法。仿真结果表明，该算法在保证用户业务可靠性要求的同时，能够更有效地提高全网资源的利用率，并大大降低网络阻塞的可能性。     

基于GMPLS的动态分布式WDM网状网路由选择算法研究

研究了在基于GMPLS的WDM网络中,当节点不具备波长变换能力并且配备有限个光收发器对时,如何为到达的业务请求建立标记交换路径(LSP)的问题。提出一种以跳数和带宽碎片要求为权重,合理分配带宽资源的新算法。仿真结果表明,该算法在保证用户业务可靠性要求的同时,能够更有效地提高全网资源的利用率,并大大降低网络阻塞的可能性。     

Ant Colony Optimization for Dynamic RWA in WDM Networks with Partial Wavelength Conversion

Dynamic routing and wavelength assignment (RWA), which supports request arrivals and lightpath terminations at random times, is needed for rapidly changing traffic demands in wavelength division multiplexed, (WDM) networks. In this paper, a new distributed heuristic algorithm based on ant colony optimization for dynamic RWA is put forward. We consider the combination of route selection and wavelength assignment as a whole using a multilayer-graph model. Therefore, an extended multilayer-graph model for WDM networks with limited wavelength conversion is presented. Compared with other RWA methods, the Ant Colony heuristic algorithm can achieve better global network optimization and can reduce communication overhead cost of the networks. Simulation showed that a lower blocking probability and a more rational wavelength resource assignment can be achieved.     

Design of a High-Performance RSVP-TE Hardware Signaling Accelerator

Signaling protocols, primarily used to set up and teardown connections, are essential in connection-oriented networks. Up to now, signaling protocols are mostly implemented in software for two reasons: complexity and the requirement for flexibility. Adversely, the price paid is in performance. Software implementations of signaling protocols are rarely capable of handling over 1000 calls/s. Corresponding call setup delays per switch are in the order of milliseconds. To improve performance for high-speed networks, we implemented a subset of the resource reservation protocol—traffic engineering signaling protocol in reconfigurable field programmable gate array hardware. Our implementation demonstrates the feasibility of 1000x speedup vis-À-vis software implementations. The impact of this work is far-reaching in that it enables connection-oriented networks to support new applications that require rate guarantees but have short call holding times.     

QoS-driven multicast routing in sparse-splitting optical networks

This paper investigates the quality-of-service (QoS)-driven multicast routing problem in a sparse-splitting optical network. The main objective is to minimize the total cost of wavelength channels utilized by the light-tree while satisfying required QoS parameters. In this paper, both the optical-layer constraints (e.g., optical signal power) and application-layer requirements (e.g., end-to-end delay and inter-destination delay variation) are considered as the QoS parameters. First, integer linear programming (ILP) formulations to solve the optimal multicast routing problem with the given QoS parameters are presented. Solving the ILP formulations for large-scale networks can easily overwhelm the capabilities of state-of-the-art computing facilities, and hence, a heuristic algorithm is proposed to construct a feasible light-tree that satisfies the required QoS parameters in large-scale networks. Simulation results demonstrate the performance of the proposed heuristic algorithm in terms of the cost of utilized wavelength channels.