Reliable Green Routing Using Two Disjoint Paths

Network robustness and throughput can be improved by routing each demand d via two disjoint paths (2DP). However, 2DP routing increases energy usage while providing lower linkutilization and redundancy. In this paper, we address an NP-complete problem, called 2DP-EAR, that aims to switch off redundant nodes and links while guaranteeing two constraints:traffic demands must be afforded 2DP, and maximum link utilization. We design an efficient heuristic, called 2DP by Nodes First (2DP-NF). We have extensively evaluated the performance of 2DP-NF on both real and/or synthetic topologies and traffic demands. As compared to using Shortest Path routing, on the GÉANT network, 2DP-NF can save around 20% energy by switching off links only with negligible effects on path delays and link utilization, even for MLU below 30%. Furthermore, 2DP-NF can obtain 39.7% power savings by switching off both nodes and links on the GÉANT network

Survivability in Time-varying Networks

Time-varying graphs are a useful model for networks with dynamic connectivity such as vehicular networks, yet, despite their great modeling power, many important features of time-varying graphs are still poorly understood. In this paper, we study the survivability properties of time-varying networks against unpredictable interruptions. We first show that the traditional definition of survivability is not effective in time-varying networks, and propose a new survivability framework. To evaluate the survivability of time-varying networks under the new framework, we propose two metrics that are analogous to MaxFlow and MinCut in static networks. We show that some fundamental survivability-related results such as Menger's Theorem only conditionally hold in time-varying networks. Then we analyze the complexity of computing the proposed metrics and develop several approximation algorithms. Finally, we conduct trace-driven simulations to demonstrate the application of our survivability framework to the robust design of a real-world bus communication network

Robust Energy Management for Green and Survivable IP Networks

Despite the growing necessity to make Internet greener, it is worth pointing out that energy-aware strategies to minimize network energy consumption must not undermine the normal network operation. In particular, two very important issues that may limit the application of green networking techniques concern, respectively, network survivability, i.e. the network capability to react to device failures, and robustness to traffic variations. We propose novel modelling techniques to minimize the daily energy consumption of IP networks, while explicitly guaranteeing, in addition to typical QoS requirements, both network survivability and robustness to traffic variations. The impact of such limitations on final network consumption is exhaustively investigated. Daily traffic variations are modelled by dividing a single day into multiple time intervals (multi-period problem), and network consumption is reduced by putting to sleep idle line cards and chassis. To preserve network resiliency we consider two different protection schemes, i.e. dedicated and shared protection, according to which a backup path is assigned to each demand and a certain amount of spare capacity has to be available on each link. Robustness to traffic variations is provided by means of a specific modelling framework that allows to tune the conservatism degree of the solutions and to take into account load variations of different magnitude. Furthermore, we impose some inter-period constraints necessary to guarantee network stability and preserve the device lifetime. Both exact and heuristic methods are proposed. Experimentations carried out with realistic networks operated with flow-based routing protocols (i.e. MPLS) show that significant savings, up to 30%, can be achieved also when both survivability and robustness are fully guaranteed

On the effects of energy-aware traffic engineering on routing reliability

Current network infrastructures are over-provisioned to increase their resilience against resource failures, e.g., bundled links and nodes, as well as congestion during peak hours. However such strategies waste resources as well as exhibit poor energy efficiency at off-peak periods. To this end, several energy aware routing algorithms have been proposed to maximally switch off redundant network resource at low traffic load to minimize energy usage. These routing solutions, however, do not consider network reliability as critical back-off links/nodes maybe switched off. Henceforth, we aim to quantify the effects of five recently proposed green routing approaches, namely FGH, GreenTE, MSPF, SSPF, and TLDP, on the following two reliability measures: (i) 2-terminal reliability (ii) path reliability. Experiments using three topologies with real and synthetic traffic demands show that switching off redundant links significantly affects the 2-terminal reliability. Routing traffic through multiple paths has lesser reliability impact while reducing energy, especially when the paths are link disjoint. Interestingly, TDLP and MSPF have better path reliabilities than using shortest path routing

Energy management in communication networks: a journey through modelling and optimization glasses

The widespread proliferation of Internet and wireless applications has produced a significant increase of ICT energy footprint. As a response, in the last five years, significant efforts have been undertaken to include energy-awareness into network management. Several green networking frameworks have been proposed by carefully managing the network routing and the power state of network devices. Even though approaches proposed differ based on network technologies and sleep modes of nodes and interfaces, they all aim at tailoring the active network resources to the varying traffic needs in order to minimize energy consumption. From a modeling point of view, this has several commonalities with classical network design and routing problems, even if with different objectives and in a dynamic context. With most researchers focused on addressing the complex and crucial technological aspects of green networking schemes, there has been so far little attention on understanding the modeling similarities and differences of proposed solutions. This paper fills the gap surveying the literature with optimization modeling glasses, following a tutorial approach that guides through the different components of the models with a unified symbolism. A detailed classification of the previous work based on the modeling issues included is also proposed