Traffic Engineering in G-MPLS networks with QoS guarantees

In this paper a new Traffic Engineering (TE) scheme to efficiently route sub-wavelength requests with different QoS requirements is proposed for G-MPLS networks. In most previous studies on TE based on dynamic traffic grooming, the objectives were to minimize the rejection probability by respecting the constraints of the optical node architecture, but without considering service differentiation. In practice, some high-priority (HP) connections can instead be characterized by specific constraints on the maximum tolerable end-to-end delay and packet-loss ratio. The proposed solution consists of a distributed two-stage scheme: each time a new request arrives, an on-line dynamic grooming scheme finds a route which fulfills the QoS requirements. If a HP request is blocked at the ingress router, a preemption algorithm is executed locally in order to create room for this traffic. The proposed preemption mechanism minimizes the network disruption, both in term of number of rerouted low-priority connections and new set-up lightpaths, and the signaling complexity. Extensive simulation experiments are performed to demonstrate the efficiency of our scheme

Logical topology design for IP rerouting: ASONs versus static OTNs

IP-based backbone networks are gradually moving to a network model consisting of high-speed routers that are flexibly interconnected by a mesh of light paths set up by an optical transport network that consists of wavelength division multiplexing (WDM) links and optical cross-connects. In such a model, the generalized MPLS protocol suite could provide the IP centric control plane component that will be used to deliver rapid and dynamic circuit provisioning of end-to-end optical light paths between the routers. This is called an automatic switched optical (transport) network (ASON). An ASON enables reconfiguration of the logical IP topology by setting up and tearing down light paths. This allows to up- or downgrade link capacities during a router failure to the capacities needed by the new routing of the affected traffic. Such survivability against (single) IP router failures is cost-effective, as capacity to the IP layer can be provided flexibly when necessary. We present and investigate a logical topology optimization problem that minimizes the total amount or cost of the needed resources (interfaces, wavelengths, WDM line-systems, amplifiers, etc.) in both the IP and the optical layer. A novel optimization aspect in this problem is the possibility, as a result of the ASON, to reuse the physical resources (like interface cards and WDM line-systems) over the different network states (the failure-free and all the router failure scenarios). We devised a simple optimization strategy to investigate the cost of the ASON approach and compare it with other schemes that survive single router failures

A survey on OFDM-based elastic core optical networking

Orthogonal frequency-division multiplexing (OFDM) is a modulation technology that has been widely adopted in many new and emerging broadband wireless and wireline communication systems. Due to its capability to transmit a high-speed data stream using multiple spectral-overlapped lower-speed subcarriers, OFDM technology offers superior advantages of high spectrum efficiency, robustness against inter-carrier and inter-symbol interference, adaptability to server channel conditions, etc. In recent years, there have been intensive studies on optical OFDM (O-OFDM) transmission technologies, and it is considered a promising technology for future ultra-high-speed optical transmission. Based on O-OFDM technology, a novel elastic optical network architecture with immense flexibility and scalability in spectrum allocation and data rate accommodation could be built to support diverse services and the rapid growth of Internet traffic in the future. In this paper, we present a comprehensive survey on OFDM-based elastic optical network technologies, including basic principles of OFDM, O-OFDM technologies, the architectures of OFDM-based elastic core optical networks, and related key enabling technologies. The main advantages and issues of OFDM-based elastic core optical networks that are under research are also discussed

Traffic engineering in dynamic optical networks

Traffic Engineering (TE) refers to all the techniques a Service Provider employs to improve the efficiency and reliability of network operations. In IP over Optical (IPO) networks, traffic coming from upper layers is carried over the logical topology defined by the set of established lightpaths. Within this framework then, TE techniques allow to optimize the configuration of optical resources with respect to an highly dynamic traffic demand. TE can be performed with two main methods: if the demand is known only in terms of an aggregated traffic matrix, the problem of automatically updating the configuration of an optical network to accommodate traffic changes is called Virtual Topology Reconfiguration (VTR). If instead the traffic demand is known in terms of data-level connection requests with sub-wavelength granularity, arriving dynamically from some source node to any destination node, the problem is called Dynamic Traffic Grooming (DTG). In this dissertation new VTR algorithms for load balancing in optical networks based on Local Search (LS) techniques are presented. The main advantage of using LS is the minimization of network disruption, since the reconfiguration involves only a small part of the network. A comparison between the proposed schemes and the optimal solutions found via an ILP solver shows calculation time savings for comparable results of network congestion. A similar load balancing technique has been applied to alleviate congestion in an MPLS network, based on the efficient rerouting of Label-Switched Paths (LSP) from the most congested links to allow a better usage of network resources. Many algorithms have been developed to deal with DTG in IPO networks, where most of the attention is focused on optimizing the physical resources utilization by considering specific constraints on the optical node architecture, while very few attention has been put so far on the Quality of Service (QoS) guarantees for the carried traffic. In this thesis a novel Traffic Engineering scheme is proposed to guarantee QoS from both the viewpoint of service differentiation and transmission quality. Another contribution in this thesis is a formal framework for the definition of dynamic grooming policies in IPO networks. The framework is then specialized for an overlay architecture, where the control plane of the IP and optical level are separated, and no information is shared between the two. A family of grooming policies based on constraints on the number of hops and on the bandwidth sharing degree at the IP level is defined, and its performance analyzed in both regular and irregular topologies. While most of the literature on DTG problem implicitly considers the grooming of low-speed connections onto optical channels using a TDM approach, the proposed grooming policies are evaluated here by considering a realistic traffic model which consider a Dynamic Statistical Multiplexing (DSM) approach, i.e. a single wavelength channel is shared between multiple IP elastic traffic flows

Design and provisioning of WDM networks for traffic grooming

Wavelength Division Multiplexing (WDM) is the most viable technique for utilizing the enormous amounts of bandwidth inherently available in optical fibers. However, the bandwidth offered by a single wavelength in WDM networks is on the order of tens of Gigabits per second, while most of the applications\u27 bandwidth requirements are still subwavelength. Therefore, cost-effective design and provisioning of WDM networks require that traffic from different sessions share bandwidth of a single wavelength by employing electronic multiplexing at higher layers. This is known as traffic grooming. Optical networks supporting traffic grooming are usually designed in a way such that the cost of the higher layer equipment used to support a given traffic matrix is reduced. In this thesis, we propose a number of optimal and heuristic solutions for the design and provisioning of optical networks for traffic grooming with an objective of network cost reduction. In doing so, we address several practical issues. Specifically, we address the design and provisioning of WDM networks on unidirectional and bidirectional rings for arbitrary unicast traffic grooming, and on mesh topologies for arbitrary multipoint traffic grooming. In multipoint traffic grooming, we address both multicast and many-to-one traffic grooming problems. We provide a unified frame work for optimal and approximate network dimensioning and channel provisioning for the generic multicast traffic grooming problem, as well as some variants of the problem. For many-to-one traffic grooming we propose optimal as well as heuristic solutions. Optimal formulations which are inherently non-linear are mapped to an optimal linear formulation. In the heuristic solutions, we employ different problem specific search strategies to explore the solution space. We provide a number of experimental results to show the efficacy of our proposed techniques for the traffic grooming problem in WDM networks

Traffic Grooming in Unidirectional WDM Rings with Bounded Degree Request Graph

Traffic grooming is a major issue in optical networks. It refers to grouping low rate signals into higher speed streams, in order to reduce the equipment cost. In SONET WDM networks, this cost is mostly given by the number of electronic terminations, namely ADMs. We consider the case when the topology is a unidirectional ring. In graph-theoretical terms, the traffic grooming problem in this case consists in partitioning the edges of a request graph into subgraphs with a maximum number of edges, while minimizing the total number of vertices of the decomposition. We consider the case when the request graph has bounded maximum degree $\Delta$, and our aim is to design a network being able to support any request graph satisfying the degree constraints. The existing theoretical models in the literature are much more rigid, and do not allow such adaptability. We formalize the problem, and solve the cases $\Delta=2$ (for all values of $C$) and $\Delta = 3$ (except the case C=4). We also provide lower and upper bounds for the general case