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.     

On Hierarchical Traffic Grooming in WDM Networks

The traffic grooming problem is of high practical importance in emerging wide-area wavelength division multiplexing (WDM) optical networks, yet it is intractable for any but trivial network topologies. In this work, we present an effective and efficient hierarchical traffic grooming framework for WDM networks of general topology, with the objective of minimizing the total number of electronic ports. At the first level of hierarchy, we decompose the network into clusters and designate one node in each cluster as the hub for grooming traffic. At the second level, the hubs form another cluster for grooming intercluster traffic. We view each (first- or second-level) cluster as a virtual star, and we present an efficient near-optimal algorithm for determining the logical topology of lightpaths to carry the traffic within each cluster. Routing and wavelength assignment is then performed directly on the underlying physical topology. We demonstrate the effectiveness of our approach by applying it to two networks of realistic size, a 32-node, 53-link topology and a 47-node, 96-link network. Comparisons to lower bounds indicate that hierarchical grooming is efficient in its use of the network resources of interest, namely, electronic ports and wavelengths. In addition to scaling to large network sizes, our hierarchical approach also facilitates the control and management of multigranular networks.      

A Framework for Differentiated Survivable Optical Virtual Private Networks

Wavelength division multiplexed (WDM) networks are matured to provide, scalable data centric infrastructure, capable of delivering flexible, value added, high speed and high bandwidth services directly from the optical domain. Optical virtual private networks (OVPNs) make use of the concept of highly reconfigurable nature of lightpaths offered by WDM, to create secure tunnels of high bandwidth across the intelligent WDM optical transport network. An OVPN is a private connection between two or more edge devices (access nodes), that allows a group of clients to fully exploit the flexibility of the switched intelligent optical network. However, OVPNs will not be a viable alternative unless they can guarantee a predictable bandwidth, availability, response time, and fault-tolerance to users. In this paper, we study the problem of dynamically establishing lightpaths for OVPNs over intelligent optical transport networks to provide varying classes of service based on the type of primary and backup lightpaths and the number of backup lightpaths, when each OVPN is specified by the desired logical connectivity and Class of Service. The type of primary and backup lightpaths determines the QoS parameters such as response time and bandwidth. Whereas, the number of backup lightpaths determines the level of fault-tolerance and availability of OVPN. Based on the service classes, any OVPN in the network falls into one of the six classes viz. single dedicated primary and single dedicated backup (SDPSDB), single dedicated primary and multiple dedicated backups (SDPMDB), single dedicated primary and single shared backup (SDPSSB), single shared primary and single shared backup (SSPSSB), single shared primary and multiple shared backups (SSPMSB), and best-effort (BE). In BE, we consider two variations—(1) OVPN as dedicated logical ring topology (DLRT) and (2) OVPN as shared logical ring topology (SLRT). We conduct extensive simulation experiments to compare and evaluate the effectiveness of different classes of OVPNs for varying network configurations–varying number of fibers, wavelengths on physical links, and number of nodes in OVPN.     

A practical approach for routing and wavelength assignment in largewavelength-routed optical networks

We consider large optical networks in which nodes employ wavelength-routing switches which enable the establishment of wavelength-division-multiplexed (WDM) channels, called lightpaths, between node pairs. We propose a practical approach to solve routing and wavelength assignment (RWA) of lightpaths in such networks. A large RWA problem is partitioned into several smaller subproblems, each of which may be solved independently and efficiently using well-known approximation techniques. A multicommodity flow formulation combined with randomized rounding is employed to calculate the routes for lightpaths. Wavelength assignments for lightpaths are performed based on graph-coloring techniques. Representative numerical examples indicate the accuracy of our algorithms     

Multiwavelength optical networks with limited wavelength conversion

This paper proposes optical wavelength division multiplexed (WDM) networks with limited wavelength conversion that can efficiently support lightpaths (connections) between nodes. Each lightpath follows a route in a network and must be assigned a channel on each link along the route. The load λ_max of a set of lightpaths is the maximum over all links of the number of lightpaths that use the link. At least λ_max wavelengths will be needed to assign channels to the lightpaths. If the network has full wavelength conversion capabilities, then λ_max wavelengths are sufficient to perform the channel assignment. Ring networks with fixed wavelength conversion capability within the nodes are proposed that can support all lightpath sets with load λ_max at most W-1, where W is the number of wavelengths in each link. Ring networks with a small additional amount of wavelength conversion capability within the nodes are also proposed that allow the support of any set of lightpaths with load λ_max at most W. A star network is also proposed with fixed wavelength conversion capability at its hub node that can support all lightpath sets with load λ_max at most W. These results are extended to tree networks and networks with arbitrary topologies. This provides evidence that significant improvements in traffic-carrying capacity can be obtained in WDM networks by providing very limited wavelength conversion capability within the network     

Optical resources provisioning: multipoint‐to‐point lightpaths mapping in all‐optical networks

In wavelength‐division multiplexing (WDM) optical networks, the bandwidth request of a traffic stream can be much lower than the capacity of a lightpath. Efficiently grooming low‐speed connections onto high‐capacity lightpaths will improve the network throughput and reduce the network cost. In this paper, we propose and evaluate a new concept of traffic aggregation in WDM mesh networks that aims to eliminate both the bandwidth under‐utilization and scalability concerns that are typical in all‐optical wavelength routed networks. This approach relies on the multipoint‐to‐point lightpath concept. In order to assess the efficiency of our proposal, all underlying network costs are compared. To achieve this aim, we devise a new provisioning algorithm to map the multipoint‐to‐point lightpaths in the network. Our results show that the proposed aggregation technique can significantly improve the network throughput while reducing its cost. Copyright © 2005 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Traffic grooming in an optical WDM mesh network

In wavelength-division multiplexing (WDM) optical networks, the bandwidth request of a traffic stream can be much lower than the capacity of a lightpath. Efficiently grooming low-speed connections onto high-capacity lightpaths will improve the network throughput and reduce the network cost. In WDM/SONET ring networks, it has been shown in the optical network literature that by carefully grooming the low-speed connection and using wavelength-division multiplexer (OADM) to perform the optical bypass at intermediate nodes, electronic ADMs can be saved and network cost will be reduced. In this study, we investigate the traffic-grooming problem in a WDM-based optical mesh topology network. Our objective is to improve the network throughput. We study the node architecture for a WDM mesh network with traffic-grooming capability. A mathematical formulation of the traffic-grooming problem is presented in this study and several fast heuristics are also proposed and evaluated     

Minimizing electronic line terminals for automatic ring protectionin general WDM optical networks

Automatic ring protection provides simple and rapid fault protection and restoration in telecommunication networks. To implement the automatic ring protection in general wavelength-division multiplexing (WDM) optical networks, the lightpaths are partitioned into groups each of which can be carried in a simple cycle of the underlying network. As the electronic line terminals are the dominant cost factor in the deployment of WDM optical networks, we study how to generate these partitions with minimum electronic line terminals. This optimization problem is NP-hard. We develop two polynomial-time approximation algorithms, with performance guarantees between 1.5 and 1.6 and between 1.5 and 1.5 + ε, respectively. The second algorithm can be adapted, with the same performance guarantees, to the problem in which lightpaths are not prespecified and only the endpoints of each connection are given. Both algorithms can be easily adapted, with the same performance guarantees, to the problem in which only link protection is desired, and each group must be carried in a closed trail. The first algorithm matches and the second algorithm improves the approximation ratio obtained independently by Eilam et al. (see 14th Int. Symp. Distributed Computing, 2000)     

Dimensioning optical networks under traffic growth models

In this paper, we consider the problem of dimensioning a large optical wavelength-division multiplexing (WDM) network assuming the traffic is growing over time. Traffic between pairs of nodes is carried through lightpaths which are high-bandwidth end-to-end circuits, occupying a wavelength on each link of the path between two nodes. We are interested in dimensioning the WDM links so that the first lightpath request rejection will occur, with high probability, after a specified period of time T. Here we introduce the concept of capacity exhaustion probability - the probability that at least one lightpath request will be rejected in the time period (0,T) due to lack of bandwidth/capacity on some link. We propose a network dimensioning method based on a traffic growth model which eventually results in a nonlinear optimization problem with cost minimization as the objective and route capacity exhaustion probabilities as the constraints. Computation of exact capacity exhaustion probabilities requires large computing resources and is thus feasible only for small networks. We consider a reduced load approximation for estimating capacity exhaustion probabilities of a wavelength routed network with arbitrary topology and traffic patterns. We show that the estimates are quite accurate and converge to the correct values under a limiting regime in the desired range of low-capacity exhaustion probabilities.     

The interface between IP and WDM and its effect on the cost of survivability

A summary of research on survivable IP networks overlaid over WDM networks is presented. The WDM networks are part of optical transport service providers, who lease lightpath services to institutions with IP networks. The lightpath services realize IP links for IP networks, and they have different protection grades such as unprotected and protected. The research included considering new network survivability requirements and incorporating them into network design problems. The cost of survivable IP over WDM networks is compared over three scenarios. Each succeeding scenario has the WDM network provide more flexible services, and the IP and WDM networks become more integrated. We consider the problem of setting up lightpaths for an IP network so that the network will remain connected after a fiber link fault. Algorithms to find the lightpaths and minimize cost are given. The network costs under the three scenarios are compared by simulations.     

Integrated network experimentation for QoS measurements in opaque MANETs

Integrated network experimentation often combines real nodes with simulated ones, each modeling different portions of the topology, in the same experimental run. They enable new validation techniques and larger experiments than obtainable using real elements alone. Integrated experiments can be particularly useful in testing and validating QoS mechanisms for mobile ad hoc networks (MANETs), when the characteristics of the intermediate wireless network segments are not observable from the end segments, and as a consequence these intermediate segments have to be treated as opaque networks; and also when there is a need to conduct experiments in a real MANET environment at a scale larger than just a few nodes. End‐to‐end QoS assurance for such opaque networks, consisting of admission control and quality adjustment, can be based on techniques for dynamically measuring throughput representing the state of these networks. In this paper, we describe a distributed and hybrid testbed that has been deployed for running large‐scale integrated experiments to demonstrate the efficacy of a measurement‐based QoS solution. The infrastructure for the testbed provides an integrated platform consisting of real nodes running the actual software under test, augmented with a simulated network environment. We define a set of metrics and run experiments to evaluate the effectiveness of the QoS solution as well the performance of the deployed testbed. We propose an alternative architecture that employs a Xen‐based virtualization of the real nodes from the deployed testbed. We compare the performances of the virtualized architecture with the deployed architecture vis‐à‐vis latency and resource utilization. Our goal is to establish benchmarks for running large‐scale experiments on performance and QoS measurements in virtualized environments. Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Design and Performance Evaluation of a Separated Control Signaling Protocol for WDM Optical Networks

In WDM optical networks, an efficient control signaling protocol is required to dynamically establish lightpaths. This paper proposes a separated control signaling protocol (SCSP) and compares the performance of SCSP with a conventional integrated control signaling protocol (ICSP). The conventional ICSP makes reservations sequentially from the source to the destination for setting up and tearing down lightpaths. It increases the control overhead and wastes the network resource if it cannot reserve the network resource at an intermediate node. Specifically, if the receiver at the destination is not available after successful reservation at intermediate nodes, it wastes a lot of bandwidth. It causes decreasing chances of reservation for other lightpaths. Instead, SCSP separates bearer control from call control to reduce the waste of network resources. The call control function checks the availability of network resources such as wavelengths and receivers. Bearer control reserves, allocates, and releases network resources. To evaluate the performance of the two protocols, they are mathematically analyzed using a probabilistic model. Simulation results are also provided to compare the proposed protocol with the conventional ICSP in terms of utilization and blocking probability. From the results of simulation and iterative analysis, we can observe that SCSP performs better than ICSP.     

Dynamic load balancing in WDM packet networks with and without wavelength constraints

We develop load balancing algorithms for WDM-based packet networks where the average traffic between nodes is dynamically changing. In WDM-based packet networks, routers are connected to each other using wavelengths (lightpaths) to form a logical network topology. The logical topology may be reconfigured by rearranging the lightpaths connecting the routers. Our algorithms reconfigure the logical topology to minimize the maximum link load. In this paper, we develop iterative reconfiguration algorithms for load balancing that track rapid changes in the traffic pattern. At each reconfiguration step, our algorithms make only a small change to the network topology hence minimizing the disruption to the network. We study the performance of our algorithms under several dynamic traffic scenarios and show that our algorithms perform near optimally. We further show that these large reconfiguration gains are achievable in systems with a limited number of wavelengths.     

Efficient routing and wavelength assignment for reconfigurable WDMnetworks

Through the use of configurable wavelength-division-multiplexing (WDM) technology including tunable optical transceivers and frequency selective switches, next-generation WDM networks will allow multiple virtual topologies to be dynamically established on a given physical topology. For N node P port networks, we determine the number of wavelengths required to support all possible virtual topologies (PN lightpaths) on a bidirectional ring physical topology. We show that if shortest path routing is used, approximately N wavelengths are needed to map N lightpaths. We then present novel adaptive lightpath routing and wavelength assignment strategies that reduce the wavelength requirements to [(N/2)] working wavelengths per port for protected networks and [(N/3)] wavelengths in each direction per port for unprotected networks. We show that this reduced wavelength requirement is optimal in the sense that it is the minimum required to support the worst case logical topology. Furthermore, we prove that a significant number of logical topologies require this minimum number of wavelengths. We also develop joint routing and wavelength assignment strategies that not only minimize the number of wavelengths required to implement the worst case logical topologies but also reduce average wavelength requirements. Finally, methods for extending these routing and wavelength assignment results to general two-connected and three-connected physical topologies are presented     

Design of a meta-mesh of chain subnetworks: enhancing theattractiveness of mesh-restorable WDM networking on low connectivitygraphs

We have developed a design refinement to increase the capacity efficiency of span-restorable mesh networks on sparse facility graphs. The new approach views the network as a "meta-mesh of chain subnetworks". This makes the prospect of WDM mesh networking more economically viable than with previous mesh-based designs where the average nodal degree is low. The meta-mesh graph is a homeomorphism of the complete network in which edges are either direct spans or chains of degree-2 nodes. The main advantage is that loop-back-type spare capacity is provided only for the working demands that originate or terminate in a chain and not for the entire flow that crosses a chain. The transiting ("express") flows are entirely mesh-protected within the meta-mesh graph which is of higher average degree and hence efficiency for mesh restoration than the network as a whole. Nodal equipment savings also arise from the grooming of express lightpaths onto the logical chain-bypass span. Only the meta-mesh nodes need optical cross-connect functionality. Other sites use OADMs and/or glassthroughs. The resultant designs comprise a special class of restorable network that is intermediate between pure span restoration and path restoration. Most of the efficiency of path restoration is achieved, but with a span restoration mechanism which is more localized and potentially faster and simpler than path restoration. The concept lends itself to implementation with OADMs having a passive waveband pass-through feature to support the logical chain bypass spans for express lightpaths     

A Study of Path Protection in Large-Scale Optical Networks

We consider the problem of designing a network of optical cross-connects (OXCs) which provides end-to-end lightpath services to large numbers of client nodes, under the requirement that the network will survive any single-link failure. Our main objective is to quantify the additional resource requirements of implementing path protection schemes over a network with no survivability properties. To this end, we present heuristic routing and wavelength assignment algorithms for dedicated path protection and two variants of shared path protection, and integrate them into the physical and logical topology design framework we developed in an earlier study. We apply our heuristics to networks with up to 1000 client nodes, with a number of lightpaths that is an order of magnitude greater than the number of clients, and for a wide range of values for system parameters such as the number of wavelengths per fiber, the number of optical transceivers per client node, and the number of ports per OXC. Our results provide insight into the relative resource requirements of dedicated and shared path protection schemes. We also find that, using shared path protection schemes, it is possible to build cost-effective survivable networks that provide rich connectivity among client nodes with only a modest additional amount of resources over a network with no survivability properties.     

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.     

Optimal regenerator assignment and resource allocation strategies for translucent optical networks

Physical layer impairments in wavelength-routed networks limit the maximum distance, a signal can travel in the optical domain, without significant distortion. Therefore, signal regeneration is required at some intermediate nodes for long-haul lightpaths. In translucent WDM networks, sparsely located regenerators at certain nodes can be used to offset the impact of physical layer impairments. The routing and wavelength assignment (RWA) techniques in such translucent networks need to take into consideration the availability of regenerators and the maximum optical reach of the transparent lightpaths (without any regeneration). Although there has been significant research interest in RWA algorithms for translucent networks, much of the research has focused on dynamic RWA techniques. Only a handful of recent papers have considered the static (offline) case, and they typically propose heuristic algorithms to solve this complex design problem for practical networks. In this paper, we propose a generalized integer linear program (ILP) based formulation for static regenerator assignment and RWA in translucent WDM optical networks, with sparse regenerator placement. To the best of our knowledge, such a formulation that optimally allocates resources for a set of lightpaths for translucent networks, given the physical network, the locations of the regenerators, and the maximum optical reach has not been considered before. The proposed formulation is important for two reasons. First, it can serve as a benchmark for evaluating different heuristic approaches that may be developedin the future. Second, we show that using a novel node representation technique, it is possible to drastically reduce the number of integer variables. This means that unlike existing ILP formulations, our approach can actually be used to generate optimal solutions for practical networks, with hundreds of lightpath demands.     

Preferred Link Based Distributed Adaptive Routing in Wavelength Routed Optical Network

As the WDM technology matures and the demand for bandwidth increases, dynamic provisioning of lightpaths at the WDM layer becomes an important and challenging problem. In this paper, we consider the problem of dynamic routing and wavelength assignment in wavelength-routed optical networks. The conventional approach to this problem is to select a route from a set of candidate routes, which has a common wavelength available on all the links of the route. In this paper, we propose a distributed algorithm which selects a route based on the state of the network (called preferred link approach). In this approach, a route is selected link by link based on a preference value given to each of the links. We propose three different heuristic functions for calculating the preference of the links, depending on the cost and congestion on the links. We evaluate our routing algorithm in terms of call acceptance ratio, cost of the path, hop length, and call setup time. Our experimental results suggest that our algorithm not only out performs the existing methods with respect to average call acceptance ratio, but, also improves the fairness among different hop connections, which is an important result in the case of WDM optical networks.     

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.