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

CORNETO: A Software System for Simulating and Optimizing Optical Networks

In this paper we present a software system that is being developed at the University of Leeds for simulating and optimizing energy efficient optical core networks. The system is called CORNETO, an acronym for CORe NETwork Optimization. The software implements many of the energy saving concepts, methods and computational heuristics that have been produced by the ongoing INTERNET, INTelligent Energy awaRe NETworks, project. The main objective of the software is to help network operators and planners green their networks while maintaining quality of service. In this paper we briefly describe the software and demonstrate its capabilities with two case studies

Joint optimization of power, electricity cost and delay in IP over WDM networks

In this paper, we investigate the joint optimization of power, electricity cost and propagation delay in IP over WDM networks employing renewable energy. We develop a mixed integer linear programming (MILP) model to jointly minimize the three parameters and compare its results to the results of optimizing these parameters individually. The models results show that the joint optimization maintains the power consumption and electricity cost savings obtained by the non-renewable powerminimized and the electricity cost-minimized models while hardly affecting the propagation delay. Compared to the delay-minimized model, the joint optimization model achieves power consumption and electricity cost savings of 73% and 74%, respectively under the non-bypass approach considering a unicasting traffic profile. The power and cost savings under an anycasting traffic profile increases to 82%

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

NETWORK DESIGN UNDER DEMAND UNCERTAINTY

A methodology for network design under demand uncertainty is proposed in this dissertation. The uncertainty is caused by the dynamic nature of the IP-based traffic which is expected to betransported directly over the optical layer in the future. Thus, there is a need to incorporate the uncertainty into a design modelexplicitly. We assume that each demand can be represented as a random variable, and then develop an optimization model to minimizethe cost of routing and bandwidth provisioning. The optimization problem is formulated as a nonlinear Multicommodity Flow problemusing Chance-Constrained Programming to capture both the demand variability and levels of uncertainty guarantee. Numerical work ispresented based on a heuristic solution approach using a linear approximation to transform the nonlinear problem to a simpler linearprogramming problem. In addition, the impact of the uncertainty on a two-layer network is investigated. This will determine how theChance-Constrained Programming based scheme can be practically implemented. Finally, the implementation guidelines for developingan updating process are provided

Energy Efficient Survivable IP over WDM Networks with Network Coding

In this work we investigate the use of network coding in 1+1 survivable IP over WDM networks by encoding the protection paths of multiple flow with each other at intermediate nodes. We study the energy efficiency of this scheme through MILP, and a heuristic with five operating options. We evaluate the MILP and the heuristics on typical and regular network topologies. Our results show that implementing network coding can produce savings up to 37% on the ring topology and 23% considering typical topologies. We also study the impact of varying the demand volumes on the network coding performanc

Energy Efficient Virtual Machines Placement in IP over WDM Networks

Virtual machines (VMs) offer an economic and scalable solution to efficiently utilize the physical resources. In this paper, we investigate the optimization of VM placement in IP over WDM core networks considering a VM workload that varies with the number of users served by the VM. Our results show that the optimal VM placement in distributed clouds yields up to 23% total power saving compared to a single cloud