On the highly stable performance of loss-free optical burst switching networks

Increase of bandwidth demand in data networks, driven by the continuous growth of the Internet and the increase of bandwidth greedy applications, raise the issue of how to support all the bandwidth requirements in the near future. Three optical switching paradigms have been defined and are being investigated: Optical Circuit Switching (OCS); Optical Packet Switching (OPS); and Optical Burst Switching (OBS). Among these paradigms, OBS is seen as the most appropriate solution today. However, OBS suffers from high burst loss as a result of contention in the bufferless mode of operation. This issue was investigated by Coutelen et al., 2009 who proposed the loss-free CAROBS framework whereby signal convertors of the optical signal to the electrical domain ensure electrical buffering. Convertors increase the network price which must be minimized to reduce the installation and operating costs of the CAROBS framework. An analysis capturing convertor requirements, with respect to the number of merging flows and CAROBS node offered load, was carried out. We demonstrated the convertor location significance, which led to an additional investigation of the shared wavelength convertors scenario. Shared wavelength convertors significantly decrease the number of required convertors and show great promise for CAROBS. Based on this study we can design a CAROBS network to contain a combination of simple and complex nodes that include none or some convertors respectively, a vital feature of network throughput efficiency and cost

Design And Analysis Of Effective Routing And Channel Scheduling For Wavelength Division Multiplexing Optical Networks

Optical networking, employing wavelength division multiplexing (WDM), is seen as the technology of the future for the Internet. This dissertation investigates several important problems affecting optical circuit switching (OCS) and optical burst switching (OBS) networks. Novel algorithms and new approaches to improve the performance of these networks through effective routing and channel scheduling are presented. Extensive simulations and analytical modeling have both been used to evaluate the effectiveness of the proposed algorithms in achieving lower blocking probability, better fairness as well as faster switching. The simulation tests were performed over a variety of optical network topologies including the ring and mesh topologies, the U.S. Long-Haul topology, the Abilene high-speed optical network used in Internet 2, the Toronto Metropolitan topology and the European Optical topology. Optical routing protocols previously published in the literature have largely ignored the noise and timing jitter accumulation caused by cascading several wavelength conversions along the lightpath of the data burst. This dissertation has identified and evaluated a new constraint, called the wavelength conversion cascading constraint. According to this constraint, the deployment of wavelength converters in future optical networks will be constrained by a bound on the number of wavelength conversions that a signal can go through when it is switched all-optically from the source to the destination. Extensive simulation results have conclusively demonstrated that the presence of this constraint causes significant performance deterioration in existing routing and wavelength assignment (RWA) algorithms. Higher blocking probability and/or worse fairness have been observed for existing RWA algorithms when the cascading constraint is not ignored. To counteract the negative side effect of the cascading constraint, two constraint-aware routing algorithms are proposed for OCS networks: the desirable greedy algorithm and the weighted adaptive algorithm. The two algorithms perform source routing using link connectivity and the global state information of each wavelength. Extensive comparative simulation results have illustrated that by limiting the negative cascading impact to the minimum extent practicable, the proposed approaches can dramatically decrease the blocking probability for a variety of optical network topologies. The dissertation has developed a suite of three fairness-improving adaptive routing algorithms in OBS networks. The adaptive routing schemes consider the transient link congestion at the moment when bursts arrive and use this information to reduce the overall burst loss probability. The proposed schemes also resolve the intrinsic unfairness defect of existing popular signaling protocols. The extensive simulation results have shown that the proposed schemes generally outperform the popular shortest path routing algorithm and the improvement could be substantial. A two-dimensional Markov chain analytical model has also been developed and used to analyze the burst loss probabilities for symmetrical ring networks. The accuracy of the model has been validated by simulation. Effective proactive routing and preemptive channel scheduling have also been proposed to address the conversion cascading constraint in OBS environments. The proactive routing adapts the fairness-improving adaptive routing mentioned earlier to the environment of cascaded wavelength conversions. On the other hand, the preemptive channel scheduling approach uses a dynamic priority for each burst based on the constraint threshold and the current number of performed wavelength conversions. Empirical results have proved that when the cascading constraint is present, both approaches would not only decrease the burst loss rates greatly, but also improve the transmission fairness among bursts with different hop counts to a large extent

Cross-layer modeling and optimization of next-generation internet networks

Scaling traditional telecommunication networks so that they are able to cope with the volume of future traffic demands and the stringent European Commission (EC) regulations on emissions would entail unaffordable investments. For this very reason, the design of an innovative ultra-high bandwidth power-efficient network architecture is nowadays a bold topic within the research community. So far, the independent evolution of network layers has resulted in isolated, and hence, far-from-optimal contributions, which have eventually led to the issues today's networks are facing such as inefficient energy strategy, limited network scalability and flexibility, reduced network manageability and increased overall network and customer services costs. Consequently, there is currently large consensus among network operators and the research community that cross-layer interaction and coordination is fundamental for the proper architectural design of next-generation Internet networks. This thesis actively contributes to the this goal by addressing the modeling, optimization and performance analysis of a set of potential technologies to be deployed in future cross-layer network architectures. By applying a transversal design approach (i.e., joint consideration of several network layers), we aim for achieving the maximization of the integration of the different network layers involved in each specific problem. To this end, Part I provides a comprehensive evaluation of optical transport networks (OTNs) based on layer 2 (L2) sub-wavelength switching (SWS) technologies, also taking into consideration the impact of physical layer impairments (PLIs) (L0 phenomena). Indeed, the recent and relevant advances in optical technologies have dramatically increased the impact that PLIs have on the optical signal quality, particularly in the context of SWS networks. Then, in Part II of the thesis, we present a set of case studies where it is shown that the application of operations research (OR) methodologies in the desing/planning stage of future cross-layer Internet network architectures leads to the successful joint optimization of key network performance indicators (KPIs) such as cost (i.e., CAPEX/OPEX), resources usage and energy consumption. OR can definitely play an important role by allowing network designers/architects to obtain good near-optimal solutions to real-sized problems within practical running times

How far can we go with OBS networks

Optical Burst Switching (OBS) was proposed ten years ago as an alternative switching paradigm in order to overcome some of the drawbacks of Optical Circuit Switching (OCS). While OBS is no more necessarily perceived as a competitor to OCS, but more of a more adapted switching for networks with bursty and highly dynamic traffic, there is still a debate around OBS, i.e., how far an OBS network can go in terms of throughput with no or limited burst losses. This thesis attempts to answer this question by investigating how to devise an upper bound on the throughput of an OBS network, assuming no recourse to electrical buffering is made at any intermediate node. We investigate both the burst scheduling and routing issues, with a larger focus on routing in three directions: (i) exploration of weighted k -shortest paths, (ii) revisiting load balancing, (iii) examining tree decomposition. Simulations have been conducted to compare and evaluate each of the new ideas with adapted (with respect to throughput upper bounding) previously proposed routing algorithms on different network and traffic instances. A comparison of the best upper bound with lower bounds obtained under various assumptions is presente

Offset time-emulated architecture for optical burst switching-modelling and performance evaluation

L'evolució de les xarxes publiques de transport de dades destaca per el continu augment de la demanda de tràfic a la que estan sotmeses. La causa és la imparable popularització d'Internet i del seu ús per a tot tipus d'aplicacions. Les xarxes de commutació de ràfegues òptiques (OBS: Optical Bursts Switching) són una solució extraordinàriament prometedora per la pròxima generació de xarxes, tant per la flexibilitat que ofereixen com per el seu alt rendiment fruit de l'explotació de la multiplexació estadística en el domini òptic.Aquesta tesi presenta l'anàlisi, modelització i avaluació de les xarxes de commutació de ràfegues òptiques basades en l'emulació del temps de compensació (emulated offset time: E-OBS). El concepte d'E-OBS defineix una arquitectura de xarxa OBS per al transportar i commutar ràfegues òptiques en una xarxa troncal en la que, al contrari de l'arquitectura convencional (C-OBS) en la que el temps de compensació s'introdueix des dels nodes d'accés, el temps de compensació s'introdueix en cadascun dels nodes de la xarxa per mitjà d'un retardador de fibra addicional. L'arquitectura E-OBS permet superar algunes de les desavantatges inherents a arquitectures C-OBS, però la seva gran virtut és la compatibilitat amb les xarxes de commutació de circuits òptics (OCS: Optical Circuit Switching) actuals i les futures xarxes de commutació de paquets òptics (OPS: Optical Packet Switching), de manera que les xarxes OBS basades en una arquitectura E-OBS) poden facilitat enormement la transició de unes a les altres.A ala vista dels principals requeriments de disseny de les xarxes OBS, que són la resolució de contencions en el domini òptic, la provisió de qualitat de servei (QoS) i l'òptim encaminament de les ràfegues per tal de minimitzar la congestió de la xarxa, . en aquesta tesi es proposa un disseny de l'arquitectura E-OBS basada en (i) un mètode viable per a la provisió del temps de compensació, (ii) una qualitat alta global de servei, i (iii) un mecanisme d'encaminament que minimitzi congestió de xarxa.- La primera part d'aquesta tesi proporciona la informació documental necessària per al disseny d'E-OBS.- La segona part se centra en l'estudi de la funcionalitat i viabilitat de l'arquitectura E-OBS. S'introdueixen els principis d'operació d'E-OBS i s'identifiquen els principals esculls que presenten les arquitectures C-OBS i que deixen de ser-ho en una arquitectura E-OBS. Alguns d'aquests esculls són la dificultat d'utilitzar un algorisme d'encaminament amb rutes alternatives, la complexitat dels algoritmes de reserva de recursos i la seva falta d'equitat, la complexitat en la provisió de la QoS, etc. En aquesta segona part es constata que l'arquitectura E-OBS redueix la complexitat dels de reserva de recursos i es verifica la viabilitat d'operació i de funcionament de la provisió del tremps de compensació en aquesta arquitectura a partir de figures de comportament obtingudes amb retardadors de fibra comercialment disponibles.- La tercera part encara el problema de la provisió de la QoS. Primer s'hi revisen els conceptes bàsics de QoS així com els mecanismes de tractament de la QoS per a xarxes OBS fent-ne una comparació qualitativa i de rendiment de tots ells. Com a resultat s'obté que el mecanisme que presenta un millor comportament és el d'avortament de la transmissió de les ràfegues de més baixa prioritat quan aquestes col·lisionen amb una de prioritat més alta (es l'anomenat Burst Preemption mechanism), el qual en alguns casos presenta un problema de senyalització innecessària. Aquesta tercera part es conclou amb la proposta d'un mecanisme de finestra a afegir al esquema de Burst Preemption que només funciona sobre una arquitectura E-OBS i que soluciona aquest problema.- En la quarta part s'afronta el problema de l'encaminament en xarxes OBS. S'estudia el comportament dels algoritmes d'encaminament adaptatius, els aïllats amb rutes alternatives i els multicamí distribuïts, sobre xarxes E-OBS. A la vista dels resultats no massa satisfactoris que s'obtenen, es planteja una solució alternativa que es basa en model d'optimització no lineal. Es formulen i resolen dos models d'optimització per als algoritmes encaminament de font multicamí que redueixen notablement la congestió en les xarxes OBS.Finalment, aquesta tesi conclou que l'arquitectura E-OBS és factible, que és més eficient que la C-OBS, que proveeix eficaçment QoS, i que és capaç d'operar amb diverses estratègies d'encaminament i de reduir eficaçment la congestió de xarxa.The fact that the Internet is a packet-based connection-less network is the main driver to develop a data-centric transport network. In this context, the optical burst switching (OBS) technology is considered as a promising solution for reducing the gap between transmission and switching speeds in future networks.This thesis presents the analysis, modelling, and evaluation of the OBS network with Emulated offset-time provisioning (E-OBS). E-OBS defines an OBS network architecture to transport and switch optical data bursts in a core network. On the contrary to a conventional offset-time provisioning OBS (C-OBS) architecture, where a transmission offset time is introduced in the edge node, in an E-OBS network the offset time is provided in the core node by means of an additional fibre delay element. The architecture is motivated by several drawbacks inherent to C-OBS architectures. It should be pointed out that the E-OBS has not been studied intensively in the literature and this concept has been considered rather occasionally.Due to the limitations in optical processing and queuing, OBS networks need a special treatment so that they could solve problems typical of data-centric networks. Contention resolution in optical domain together with quality of service (QoS) provisioning for quality demanding services are, among other things, the main designing issues when developing OBS networks. Another important aspect is routing problem, which concerns effective balancing of traffic load so that to reduce burst congestion at overloaded links. Accounting for these requirements, the design objectives for the E-OBS architecture are (i) feasibility of offset-time provisioning, (ii) an overall high quality of service, and (iii) reduction of network congestion. These objectives are achieved by combining selected concepts and strategies, together with appropriate system design as well as network traffic engineering.The contributions in this thesis can be summarized as follows.- At the beginning, we introduce the principles of E-OBS operation and we demonstrate that C-OBS possesses many drawbacks that can be easily avoided in E-OBS. Some of the discussed issues are the problem of unfairness in resources reservation, difficulty with alternative routing, complexity of resources reservation algorithms, efficiency of burst scheduling, and complexity in QoS provisioning. The feasibility of E-OBS operation is investigated as well; in this context, the impact of congestion in control plane on OBS operation is studied. As a result, we confirm the feasibility of E-OBS operation with commercially available fibre delay elements.- Then, we provide both qualitative and quantitative comparison of the selected, most addressed in the literature, QoS mechanisms. As an outcome a burst preemption mechanism, which is characterized by the highest overall performance, is qualified for operating in E-OBS. Since the preemptive mechanism may produce the overbooking of resources in an OBS network we address this issue as well. We propose the preemption window mechanism to solve the problem. An analytical model of the mechanism legitimates correctness of our solution.- Finally, we concern with a routing problem - our routing objective is to help the contention resolution algorithms in the reduction of burst losses. We propose and evaluate two isolated alternative routing algorithms designed for labelled E-OBS networks. Then we study multi-path source routing and we use network optimization theory to improve it. The presented formulae for partial derivatives, to be used in a non-linear optimization problem, are straightforward and very fast to compute. It makes the proposed non-linear optimization method a viable alternative for linear programming formulations based on piecewise linear approximations.Concluding, E-OBS is shown to be a feasible OBS network architecture of profitable functionality, to support efficiently the QoS provisioning, and to be able to operate with different routing strategies and effectively reduce the network congestion

AVANCES HACIA CONMUTACIÓN Y ENRUTAMIENTO COMPLETAMENTE ÓPTICOS EN REDES TIPO CORE

RESUMEN En la última década Internet ha tenido un crecimiento exponencial en el número de usuarios nuevos haciendo que las expectativas en cuanto a la calidad del servicio recibido sean evaluadas constantemente. Estas y otras exigencias constituyen la problemática principal que se relaciona con el comportamiento y desempeño en la infraestructura de las redes de acceso y tipo core definidas como soporte para las denominadas redes de próxima generación o NGN con orientación “todo IP”, es así como las propuestas en cuanto al soporte óptico desarrolladas hasta el momento, no aseguran que los resultados de su despliegue sean satisfactorios. Las redes ópticas surgen como una de las tecnologías más prometedoras para cubrir la demanda en cuanto a ancho de banda, capacidad de la red, calidad de servicio y desempeño. Lo anterior se soporta en el hecho del gran número de investigaciones que se están llevando a cabo por parte de Universidades, empresas y grupos alrededor del mundo respecto a las telecomunicaciones ópticas. OBS y OPS (conmutación óptica de ráfagas y de paquetes, respectivamente) son los avances con mayor relevancia en la actualidad prometiendo una red tipo core adaptable a los requerimientos de los servicios y a los cambios en la infraestructura de la red. Los avances más recientes en estas tecnologías aseguran un mejor aprovechamiento de la infraestructura óptica existente y por desplegar, asegurando procesos completamente ópticos (conmutación y enrutamiento) con retardos mínimos jamás alcanzados hasta ahora. PALABRAS CLAVES: Redes de Próxima Generación, Conmutación Óptica de Paquetes, Conmutación Óptica de Ráfagas, Calidad de Servicio y Dominio Óptico.  ANALYTICAL SUMMARY In the last decade Internet has experienced an explosive growth due to numbers of new users as well as their expectations to quality of receiving services. These changes are major problem in core networks and the technology used so far does not assure satisfying results. Optical networks have emerged as a promising technology to fulfill growing demands on networks capacity, Quality of Service and performance. Moreover, a wide variety of technologies of fiber communication and networking are focus of research in optical telecommunication domain. Optical Packet/ Burst Switching Network (OPS/OBS) is a promising technology to present and future core networks due to best network utilization and adaptability to changes in the network infrastructure (core network).  KEYWORDS: Next Generation Networks, Optical Packet and Burst Switching, Quality of Service and Optical domain

AVANCES HACIA CONMUTACIÓN Y ENRUTAMIENTO COMPLETAMENTE ÓPTICOS EN REDES TIPO CORE

RESUMEN En la última década Internet ha tenido un crecimiento exponencial en el número de usuarios nuevos haciendo que las expectativas en cuanto a la calidad del servicio recibido sean evaluadas constantemente. Estas y otras exigencias constituyen la problemática principal que se relaciona con el comportamiento y desempeño en la infraestructura de las redes de acceso y tipo core definidas como soporte para las denominadas redes de próxima generación o NGN con orientación “todo IP”, es así como las propuestas en cuanto al soporte óptico desarrolladas hasta el momento, no aseguran que los resultados de su despliegue sean satisfactorios. Las redes ópticas surgen como una de las tecnologías más prometedoras para cubrir la demanda en cuanto a ancho de banda, capacidad de la red, calidad de servicio y desempeño. Lo anterior se soporta en el hecho del gran número de investigaciones que se están llevando a cabo por parte de Universidades, empresas y grupos alrededor del mundo respecto a las telecomunicaciones ópticas. OBS y OPS (conmutación óptica de ráfagas y de paquetes, respectivamente) son los avances con mayor relevancia en la actualidad prometiendo una red tipo core adaptable a los requerimientos de los servicios y a los cambios en la infraestructura de la red. Los avances más recientes en estas tecnologías aseguran un mejor aprovechamiento de la infraestructura óptica existente y por desplegar, asegurando procesos completamente ópticos (conmutación y enrutamiento) con retardos mínimos jamás alcanzados hasta ahora. PALABRAS CLAVES: Redes de Próxima Generación, Conmutación Óptica de Paquetes, Conmutación Óptica de Ráfagas, Calidad de Servicio y Dominio Óptico.  ANALYTICAL SUMMARY In the last decade Internet has experienced an explosive growth due to numbers of new users as well as their expectations to quality of receiving services. These changes are major problem in core networks and the technology used so far does not assure satisfying results. Optical networks have emerged as a promising technology to fulfill growing demands on networks capacity, Quality of Service and performance. Moreover, a wide variety of technologies of fiber communication and networking are focus of research in optical telecommunication domain. Optical Packet/ Burst Switching Network (OPS/OBS) is a promising technology to present and future core networks due to best network utilization and adaptability to changes in the network infrastructure (core network).  KEYWORDS: Next Generation Networks, Optical Packet and Burst Switching, Quality of Service and Optical domain

Digital signal processing optical receivers for the mitigation of physical layer impairments in dynamic optical networks

IT IS generally believed by the research community that the introduction of complex network functions—such as routing—in the optical domain will allow a better network utilisation, lower cost and footprint, and a more efficiency in energy usage. The new optical components and sub-systems intended for dynamic optical networking introduce new kinds of physical layer impairments in the optical signal, and it is of paramount importance to overcome this problem if dynamic optical networks should become a reality. Thus, the aim of this thesis was to first identify and characterise the physical layer impairments of dynamic optical networks, and then digital signal processing techniques were developed to mitigate them. The initial focus of this work was the design and characterisation of digital optical receivers for dynamic core optical networks. Digital receiver techniques allow for complex algorithms to be implemented in the digital domain, which usually outperform their analogue counterparts in performance and flexibility. An AC-coupled digital receiver for core networks—consisting of a standard PIN photodiode and a digitiser that takes samples at twice the Nyquist rate—was characterised in terms of both bit-error rate and packet-error rate, and it is shown that the packet-error rate can be optimised by appropriately setting the preamble length. Also, a realistic model of a digital receiver that includes the quantisation impairments was developed. Finally, the influence of the network load and the traffic sparsity on the packet-error rate performance of the receiver was investigated. Digital receiver technologies can be equally applied to optical access networks, which share many traits with dynamic core networks. A dual-rate digital receiver, capable of detecting optical packets at 10 and 1.25 Gb/s, was developed and characterised. The receiver dynamic range was extended by means of DC-coupling and non-linear signal clipping, and it is shown that the receiver performance is limited by digitiser noise for low received power and non-linear clipping for high received power

A Technique to Minimize Contention in Optical Burst Switching Networks

Optical burst switching (OBS) is the new switching technique for next generation optical networks. However, there are certain issues such as burst aggregation, scheduling, contention resolution and QoS that needs to be addressed in OBS. This thesis is an attempt to address the burst scheduling and burst contention in OBS networks. Several scheduling algorithms have been proposed in the literature, which can be categorized into Horizon and Void lling scheduling algorithm. Void lling algorithms perform better because they exploits void within a channel for scheduling. Reported void lling algorithms - Latest available unscheduled channel with void lling (LAUC-VF) and Minimum end void (Min-EV) - do not consider the void duration in scheduling. In this thesis we propose a new scheduling algorithm called Best Fit Void Filling (BFVF), which consider both void duration and incoming burst length to nd an optimal void channel. We simulate our proposed scheme using obs-ns simulator and compared with LAUC-VF and Min-EV algorithm. Result shows that the burst loss ratio is lower and channel utilization is higher in our proposed scheme

GMPLS-OBS interoperability and routing acalability in internet

The popularization of Internet has turned the telecom world upside down over the last two decades. Network operators, vendors and service providers are being challenged to adapt themselves to Internet requirements in a way to properly serve the huge number of demanding users (residential and business). The Internet (data-oriented network) is supported by an IP packet-switched architecture on top of a circuit-switched, optical-based architecture (voice-oriented network), which results in a complex and rather costly infrastructure to the transport of IP traffic (the dominant traffic nowadays). In such a way, a simple and IP-adapted network architecture is desired. From the transport network perspective, both Generalized Multi-Protocol Label Switching (GMPLS) and Optical Burst Switching (OBS) technologies are part of the set of solutions to progress towards an IP-over-WDM architecture, providing intelligence in the control and management of resources (i.e. GMPLS) as well as a good network resource access and usage (i.e. OBS). The GMPLS framework is the key enabler to orchestrate a unified optical network control and thus reduce network operational expenses (OPEX), while increasing operator's revenues. Simultaneously, the OBS technology is one of the well positioned switching technologies to realize the envisioned IP-over-WDM network architecture, leveraging on the statistical multiplexing of data plane resources to enable sub-wavelength in optical networks. Despite of the GMPLS principle of unified control, little effort has been put on extending it to incorporate the OBS technology and many open questions still remain. From the IP network perspective, the Internet is facing scalability issues as enormous quantities of service instances and devices must be managed. Nowadays, it is believed that the current Internet features and mechanisms cannot cope with the size and dynamics of the Future Internet. Compact Routing is one of the main breakthrough paradigms on the design of a routing system scalable with the Future Internet requirements. It intends to address the fundamental limits of current stretch-1 shortest-path routing in terms of RT scalability (aiming at sub-linear growth). Although "static" compact routing works fine, scaling logarithmically on the number of nodes even in scale-free graphs such as Internet, it does not handle dynamic graphs. Moreover, as multimedia content/services proliferate, the multicast is again under the spotlight as bandwidth efficiency and low RT sizes are desired. However, it makes the problem even worse as more routing entries should be maintained. In a nutshell, the main objective of this thesis in to contribute with fully detailed solutions dealing both with i) GMPLS-OBS control interoperability (Part I), fostering unified control over multiple switching domains and reduce redundancy in IP transport. The proposed solution overcomes every interoperability technology-specific issue as well as it offers (absolute) QoS guarantees overcoming OBS performance issues by making use of the GMPLS traffic-engineering (TE) features. Keys extensions to the GMPLS protocol standards are equally approached; and ii) new compact routing scheme for multicast scenarios, in order to overcome the Future Internet inter-domain routing system scalability problem (Part II). In such a way, the first known name-independent (i.e. topology unaware) compact multicast routing algorithm is proposed. On the other hand, the AnyTraffic Labeled concept is also introduced saving on forwarding entries by sharing a single forwarding entry to unicast and multicast traffic type. Exhaustive simulation campaigns are run in both cases in order to assess the reliability and feasible of the proposals