A next-generation optical regional access network

We describe an optical regional access network which combines electronic IP routing with intelligent networking functionality of the optical WDM layer. The optical WDM layer provides such networking functions as network logical topology reconfiguration, optical flow switching to offload traffic and bypass IP routers, wavelength routing of signals, protection switching and restoration in the optical domain, and flexible network service provisioning by reconfigurable wavelength connectivity. We discuss key enabling technologies for the WDM layer and describe their limitations. The symbiosis of electronic and optical WDM networking functions also allows support for heterogeneous format traffic and will enable efficient gigabit-per-second user access in next-generation Internet networks     

Differentiated integrated QoS control in the optical Internet

In order to facilitate convergence of networks and services, this article investigates a new hybrid and integrated QoS control scheme that combines electrical IP layer features with reconfigurable optical layer, and addresses cross-layer design on QoS control in optical Internet (i.e., IP/WDM networks). The proposed integrated QoS control scheme can not only provide appropriate transport service for various types of traffic relating to different service categories in a cost-effective way, but also maintain high flexibility/scalability for integrated services provisioning, which seems to be preferred for QoS provisioning in the next-generation multiservice integrated optical Internet.     

A management and visualization framework for reconfigurable WDM optical networks

As the phenomenal advance in optical WDM networking technologies continues, optical WDM network equipment has been deployed not only in backbone networks, but also in regional, metropolitan, and access networks. It is widely believed that a major component of the next-generation Internet will be an IP-based optical network employing WDM. WDM wavelength routing and signaling have become an active research field, and dynamic and adaptive wavelength routing and assignment algorithms have been proposed. However, there is less work on reporting network control and management system implementation efforts over testbed WDM networks. This article presents a network management and visualization framework aimed at guiding the development of management applications for reconfigurable WDM optical networks. A layered framework architecture including element and network management and visualization is provided, and an object-based information model representing the WDM network is introduced. Functional components on reconfiguration, software agent, and network visualization services are presented, and important issues related to optical lightpath generation are discussed. A network visualization service also provides WDM control and management APIs to applications and access networks such as an IP network management system. To illustrate the usage of the framework, we share our experience in implementing the MONET network control and management system, and present network visualization views obtained from the MONET WDM network to highlight the framework features.     

Multi-Layer Differentiated Integrated Survivability for Optical Internet

In this paper, we study the problem of multi-layer integrated survivability (MLIS) for efficiently provisioning reliable traffic connections of arbitrary bandwidth granularities in the integrated optical Internet. We decompose the MLIS problem into three sub-problems: survivable strategies design (SSD), spare capacity dimensioning (SCD), and dynamic survivable routing (DSR). First, a review of network survivability in multi-layer IP/WDM networks is provided. Then, multi-layer survivability strategies are proposed and it is observed how these strategies could be applied to the integrated optical Internet architecture. We also present an enhanced integrated shared pool (ISP) method for solving the static MLIS problem (i.e., the SCD sub-problem) and the priority-based integer programming formulations are also given. Moreover, we design a novel scheme called the differentiated integrated survivability algorithm (DISA) to solve the dynamic MLIS problem (i.e., the DSR sub-problem), which employs flexible survivable routing strategies according to the priority of the traffic resilience request. Performance simulation results of DISA show that our adaptive survival schemes perform much better in terms of traffic blocking ratio, spare resource requirement, and average traffic recovery ratio compared with other solutions in the optical Internet.     

Performance analysis of multicast routing and wavelength assignment protocol with dynamic traffic grooming in WDM networks

The need for on‐demand provisioning of wavelength‐routed channels with service‐differentiated offerings within the transport layer has become more essential because of the recent emergence of high bit rate Internet protocol (IP) network applications. Diverse optical transport network architectures have been proposed to achieve the above requirements. This approach is determined by fundamental advances in wavelength division multiplexing (WDM) technologies. Because of the availability of ultra long‐reach transport and all‐optical switching, the deployment of all‐optical networks has been made possible. The concurrent transmission of multiple streams of data with the assistance of special properties of fiber optics is called WDM. The WDM network provides the capability of transferring huge amounts of data at high speeds by the users over large distances. There are several network applications that require the support of QoS multicast, such as multimedia conferencing systems, video‐on‐demand systems, real‐time control systems, etc. In a WDM network, the route decision and wavelength assignment of lightpath connections are based mainly on the routing and wavelength assignment (RWA). The multicast RWA's task is to maximize the number of multicast groups admitted or minimize the call‐blocking probability. The dynamic traffic‐grooming problem in wavelength‐routed networks is generally a two‐layered routing problem in which traffic connections are routed over lightpaths in the virtual topology layer and lightpaths are routed over physical links in the physical topology layer. In this paper, a multicast RWA protocol for capacity improvement in WDM networks is designed. In the wavelength assignment technique, paths from the source node to each of the destination nodes and the potential paths are divided into fragments by the junction nodes and these junction nodes have the wavelength conversion capability. By using the concept of fragmentation and grouping, the proposed scheme can be generally applied for the wavelength assignment of multicast in WDM networks. An optimized dynamic traffic grooming algorithm is also developed to address the traffic grooming problem in mesh networks in the multicast scenario for maximizing the resource utilization and minimizing the blocking probability. Copyright © 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Applying PTF/VTF routing policies in multilayer IP/MPLS-based ASON/GMPLS multi-domain networks

The IP/MPLS-based ASON/GMPLS hybrid network architecture enables the interaction between the IP layer and the optical dense wavelength division multiplexing (DWDM) layer. This architecture makes it possible to transfer huge amounts of traffic data on DWDM networks, while supporting Internet Protocol (IP)-based service applications. Additionally, this architecture provides a unified routing scenario, which allows the dynamic routing in both the IP layer and/or optical layer. Cross- layer routing has been addressed in single domain networks scenarios, where the routing policies Physical Topology First (PTF) and Virtual Topology First (VTP) have been proposed and applied. However, applying cross-layer routing using both routing topology policies PTF and VTF has not been investigated in a multi-domain networks scenario yet. In this study, we address this issue and propose a routing scheme to establish traffic connections in the optical WDM layer and the IP layer, which makes the applicability of PTF and VTF in multilayer multi-domain network feasible.     

Architecture and Engineering Issues in Building an IP over WDM Networks

The technologies of IP over WDM have presently received increasing attention owing to the rapid growth in Internet traffic and the need for next-generation Internet technologies. The challenge now is how to integrate the services of IP over WDM optical networks to take full advantages of WDM technologies and IP technologies, and yield a high-throughput optical platform directly underpinning next generation data networks. This article discusses some of the architecture and technology issues for the design of IP over WDM optical networks.     

Advances in the management and control of optical Internet

Given the ever increasing demand for network bandwidth, and the phenomenal advances in optical wavelength division multiplexing (WDM) networking technologies, a major component of the next generation Internet will be an Internet protocol (IP)-based optical WDM network. As IP over WDM networking technologies mature, a number of important architectural, management and control issues have surfaced. These issues need to be addressed before a true next generation optical Internet can emerge. We enumerate some of the key architectural, management and control issues and discuss corresponding approaches and advances made toward addressing these issues. We first review the different IP/WDM networking architectural models and their tradeoffs. We outline and discuss several management and control issues and corresponding approaches related to the configuration, fault, and performance management of IP over dynamic WDM networks. We present an analysis and supporting simulation results demonstrating the potential benefits of dynamic IP over WDM networks. We then discuss the issues related to IP/WDM traffic engineering in more detail, and present the approach taken in the NGI SuperNet Network Control and Management Project funded by DARPA. In particular, we motivate and present an innovative integrated traffic-engineering framework for reconfigurable IP/WDM networks. It builds on the strength of multiprotocol label switching for fine-grain IP load balancing, and on the strength of reconfigurable WDM networking for reducing the IP network's weighted-hop-distance, and for expanding the bottleneck bandwidth     

Protection approaches for dynamic traffic in IP/MPLS-over-WDM networks

Due to the explosive growth of data-related traffic driven by the Internet, network reliability becomes an important issue. We investigate various protection approaches to handle failures for dynamic traffic demands in IP/MPLS-over-WDM networks. An LSP can be protected at either the IP/MPLS layer or the optical layer. In IP/MPLS layer protection, an LSP is protected by providing a link-disjoint backup LSP between its end nodes. In optical layer protection, an LSP is protected by the backup lightpath of each lightpath traversed by the LSP. We present two integrated routing algorithms: hop-based integrated routing algorithm and bandwidth-based integrated routing algorithm (BIRA) to set up the restorable bandwidth-guaranteed paths efficiently. Then we present a multilayer protection scheme for multiclass traffic in such networks. This scheme takes into account the different QoS and recovery requirements of the traffic to provide protection capability either at the MPLS layer or at the optical layer in a cost-effective manner. We use the connection blocking probability and number of optical-electrical-optical conversions as performance metrics to compare various protection approaches.     

A Lagrangian-Relaxation Based Network Profit Optimization For Mesh SONET-Over-WDM Networks

In Wavelength Division Multiplexing (WDM) networks, the huge capacity of wavelength channels is generally much larger than the bandwidth requirement of individual traffic streams from network users. Traffic grooming techniques aggregate low-bandwidth traffic streams onto high-bandwidth wavelength channels. In this paper, we study the optimization problem of grooming the static traffic in mesh Synchronous Optical Network (SONET) over WDM networks. The problem is formulated as a constrained integer linear programming problem and an innovative optimization objective is developed as network profit optimization. The routing cost in the SONET and WDM layers as well as the revenue generated by accepting SONET traffic demands are modelled. Through the optimization process, SONET traffic demands will be selectively accepted based on the profit (i.e., the excess of revenue over network cost) they generate. Consiering the complexity of the network optimization problem, a decomposition approach using Lagrangian relaxation is proposed. The overall relaxed dual problem is decomposed into routing and wavelength assignment and SONET traffic routing sub-problems. The subgradient approach is used to optimize the derived dual function by updating the Lagrange multipliers. To generate a feasible network routing scheme, a heuristic algorithm is proposed based on the dual solution. A systematic approach to obtain theoretical performance bounds is presented for an arbitrary topology mesh network. This is the first time that such theoretical performance bounds are obtained for SONET traffic grooming in mesh topology networks. The optimization results of sample networks indicate that the roposed algorithm achieves good sub-optimal solutions. Finally, the influence of various network parameters is studied.     

Distributed dynamic grooming routing and wavelength assignment in WDM optical mesh networks

The bandwidth of a wavelength channel in WDM optical networks is very high compared to the user’s requirements for various applications. Therefore, there is a scope for better utilization of channel bandwidth by traffic grooming, in which several user’s channels are multiplexed for transmission over a single channel. Several research works have been reported on traffic grooming routing and wavelength assignment (GRWA) for static and dynamic traffic pattern under centralized environment. Distributed dynamic grooming routing and wavelength assignment (DDGRWA) is a new and quite unexplored area in WDM optical mesh networks. This article introduces the concept of distributed traffic grooming in WDM mesh networks which also includes virtual topology construction, reconfiguration, routing and wavelength assignment in the distributed environment assuming incoming traffic to be dynamic in nature. We have also presented simulation results of our algorithm on dynamically generated traffic under various network topologies.     

Optical burst switching for service differentiation in thenext-generation optical Internet

In an effort to eliminate the electronic bottleneck, new optical switches/routers (hardware) are being built for the next-generation optical Internet where IP runs over an all-optical WDM layer. However, important issues yet to be addressed in terms of protocols (software) are how to develop a new paradigm that does not require any buffer at the WDM layer, as in circuit switching, and elimination of any layers between which exist mainly due to historical reasons. At the same time, such a paradigm should also efficiently support bursty traffic with high resource utilization as in packet switching. This article surveys design issues related to a new switching paradigm called optical burst switching, which achieves a balance between circuit and packet switching while avoiding their shortcomings. We describe how OBS can be applied to the next-generation optical Internet, and in particular how offset times and delayed reservation can help avoid the use of buffer, and support quality of service at the WDM layer     

Dynamic connection provisioning with shared protection in IP/WDM networks

Internet protocol (IP) traffic connections arrive dynamically at wavelength‐division multiplexing (WDM) network edges with low data rates compared with the wavelength capacity, availability, and quality‐of‐service (QoS) constraints. This paper introduces a scheme to be integrated into the control and management plane of IP/WDM networks to satisfy the availability and QoS required for IP traffic connections bundled onto a single wavelength (lightpath) in WDM networks protected by shared‐backup path protection (SBPP). This scheme consists of two main operations: (i) routing multi‐granular connections and traffic grooming policies, and (ii) providing appropriate shared protection on the basis of subscribers’ service‐level agreements in terms of data rate, availability, and blocking probability. Using the Markov chain process, a probabilistic approach is developed to conceive connection blocking probability models, which can quantify the blocking probability and service utilization of M:N and 1:N SBPP schemes. The proposed scheme and developed mathematical models have been evaluated in terms of bandwidth blocking ratio, availability satisfaction rate, network utilization, and connection blocking probability performance metrics. The obtained research results in this paper provide network operators an operational setting parameter, which controls the allocation of working and backup resources to dynamic IP traffic connections on the basis of their priority and data rate while satisfying their requirements in terms of bandwidth and availability. Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Prediction-based routing as RWA in multilayer traffic engineering

Multilayer traffic engineering (MLTE) allows coping with ever-increasing and varying traffic demands in IP-over-Optical multilayer networks. It utilizes cross-layer TE (Traffic Engineering) techniques to provision optical lightpath capacity to the IP/MPLS (Internet Protocol/ Multi-Protocol Label Switching) logical topology on-demand. Such provisioning however causes optical connection arrival rates that pose strong performance requirements to Routing and Wavelength Assignment (RWA) strategies. Collecting up-to-date network information for the RWA with rapidly changing network states can be quite difficult. Exposing optical layer state information to the IP layer in the overlay model, or transforming this optical layer information in a workable representation in an integrated control plane is similarly problematic. Prediction-Based Routing (PBR) has been proposed as a RWA mechanism for optical transport networks; it bases routing not on possibly inaccurate or outdated network state, but instead on previous connections set-up. In this article, we propose to implement PBR as the RWA mechanism in the optical layer of a multilayer network, and use the predictive capabilities of PBR to expose dynamic optical network information into the multilayer traffic engineering algorithm with minimal control plane overhead. Some simulations show the benefits of using the PBR in the optical layer for MLTE purposes.     

Traffic engineering in multigranularity heterogeneous optical WDM mesh networks through dynamic traffic grooming

In this article we investigate the problem of efficiently provisioning connections of different bandwidth granularities in a heterogeneous WDM mesh network through dynamic traffic grooming schemes under traffic engineering principles. Due to the huge amount of traffic a WDM backbone network can support and the large geographic area it can cover, constructing and upgrading such an optical WDM network can be costly. Hence, it is extremely important for network operators to apply traffic engineering strategies to cost-effectively support different bandwidth granularity services using only the appropriate amount of network resources. This requires an optical WDM network to have multigranularity switching capability, and such a network tends to be a multivendor heterogeneous network. However, WDM network heterogeneity increases the difficulty and challenge of efficient traffic provisioning. In this article we present different TE issues that need to be carefully considered in such an optical WDM network, and propose possible solutions and extensions for the generalized multiprotocol label switching optical network control plane. We extend an existing generic graph model to perform efficient traffic grooming and achieve different TE objectives through simple shortest path computation algorithms. We show that our approach is very practical and very suitable for traffic engineering in a heterogeneous multigranularity optical WDM mesh network.     

Adaptive load-balancing in WDM mesh networks with performance guarantees

In nowadays, wavelength-division multiplexing (WDM) networks, on the one hand, increasingly more users expect the network to provide high-priority QoS services demanding no congestion and low latency. On the other hand, it is significantly more difficult for network operators to forecast future traffic demands, as the packet traffic running over WDM networks fluctuates over time for a variety of reasons. Confronted with a rough understanding of traffic patterns as well as the increasing number of time-sensitive applications, most networks today are grossly over-provisioned. Thus, designing cost-effective WDM networks in an uncertain traffic environment, which includes network planning and robust routing, is both an important and a challenging task. In this paper, we explore adaptive load-balancing to investigate the problems of network planning and robust routing for WDM mesh networks under varying traffic matrices. We first propose an efficient heuristic algorithm called Maximizing Network Capability (MNC) to provision congestion-free and cost-effective WDM networks based on load-balancing to deal with traffic uncertainty. Then, a novel traffic grooming algorithm called Adding Direct Traffic (ADT) is proposed to implement robust routing with partial traffic information. Finally, we demonstrate by simulation that MNC consumes less resources than previous methods and performs quite close to the optimal solution, while ADT achieves the desirable performance in delay, jitter (delay variation), and throughput compared with existing robust routing and traffic grooming algorithms.     

A Location-Routing Problem in Designing Optical Internet Access with WDM Systems

In this paper, we deal with a location-routing problem in designing the optical Internet with WDM systems. This problem arises from the design of broadband local access networks that deliver high-speed access service to residential subscribers. The problem is to find an optimal location of the gateway and optimal routing of traffic demands in the optical access network. We develop mixed-integer programming models for solving the location-routing problem to minimize the total cost of network elements used in the network while carrying the offered traffic. By exploiting the inherent structure of the problem, we derive two effective tabu search procedures. We present promising computational results of the proposed solution procedures.     

Integrated routing in GMPLS-based IP/WDM networks

The Internet traffic evolution has forced network operators to migrate toward an integrated infrastructure which brings the IP and optical layers under a unified model. The integration between the two technologies has been facilitated by the development of the Generalized Multi Protocol Label Switching. In the integrated scenario, Multilayer Traffic Engineering can be reinforced with integrated routing techniques. Integrated IP/WDM routing facilitates the routing decision phase by allowing a node to have a complete knowledge of the IP and WDM domains when accommodating traffic. This study focuses on integrated IP/WDM routing. We analyze two basic policies widely discussed in literature: one policy prioritizes the traffic accommodation on the virtual topology, while the other prioritizes the traffic accommodation on the physical topology. We show that both the mechanisms do not lead to efficient resource utilization because they tend to congest one layer more than the other one. We propose an adaptive heuristic which combines the advantages of both the policies. When accommodating traffic, the proposed approach selects the appropriate layer depending on the resource utilization being experienced in the virtual and the physical topologies. We demonstrate via simulations that the cross-layer resource optimization executed by the proposed scheme achieves significant improvements in terms of blocking ratio.     

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.     

Efficient protocols for multimedia streams on WDMA networks

This paper introduces a new approach to integrate different types of medium access control (MAC) protocols into a single wavelength-division-multiplexing (WDM) network system. The WDM network is based on a passive star coupler, and the purpose of integrating different MAC protocols is to efficiently accommodate various types of multimedia traffic streams with different characteristics and quality of service demands. Our integrated MAC protocol is termed multimedia wavelength-division multiple-access (M-WDMA). Three types of multimedia traffic streams are considered in this paper: constant-bit-rate traffic and two classes of variable-bit-rate traffic. Accordingly, three tunable transmitters and one fixed home channel receiver are used in the design of each WDM node. The transmitters transmit the three types of multimedia traffic streams in a pipeline fashion so as to overcome the tuning time overhead and to support parallel transmissions of traffic streams that emerge simultaneously. We further incorporate a dynamic bandwidth allocation scheme that dynamically adjusts the portions of bandwidth occupied by the three types of traffic streams according to their demands. Consequently the M-WDMA protocol achieves high utilization and efficiently adapts to the demands of the multimedia streams so as to guarantee their QoS. The performance of the M-WDMA is evaluated through a simple analytical model and extensive discrete-event simulations. It is shown that the M-WDMA can satisfy the QoS requirements of various mixes of multimedia traffic streams even under very stringent requirements. Moreover, we show that the M-WDMA outperforms conventional MAC protocols for WDM networks. As a result, we expect M-WDMA to be a good multimedia MAC candidate protocol for future-generation WDM networks.