Enabling dynamic topologies in communication networks

Energy efficiency has become an important focus in the context of networks as they are major energy users. For extended periods, resources consume energy, but are only lightly loaded. Dynamic Topologies is a concept where networks can adapt their topology to traffic load by disabling unused nodes and links. Previous work has demonstrated that such dynamic networks can reduce power consumption considerably. Traditional routing protocols are not suitable to implement such networks as rerouting would cause major disruptions to active traffic. This research project proposes a mechanism to alter network paths dynamically to enable changing topologies. It is based on Multi Protocol Label Switching (MPLS) methodology and proposes flow tracking to maintain transaction state. It causes minimal disruptions to active network connections. This paper discusses the underlying optimisation problem, proposes Dynamic Topologies using MPLS (DTM) and introduces simulation results that demonstrate the operation of the proposed scheme