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

Reactive and proactive routing in labelled optical burst switching networks

Optical burst switching architectures without buffering capabilities are sensitive to burst congestion. The existence of a few highly congested links may seriously aggravate the network throughput. Proper network routing may help in congestion reduction. The authors focus on adaptive routing strategies to be applied in labelled OBS networks, that is, with explicit routing paths. In particular, two isolated alternative routing algorithms that aim at network performance improvement because of reactive route selection are studied. Moreover, a nonlinear optimisation method for multi-path source-based routing, which aims at proactive congestion reduction is proposed. Comparative performance results are provided and some implementation issues are discussed.Postprint (published version

Effective burst preemption in OBS network

Trabajo presentado al Workshop on High Performance Switching and Routing 2006, Poznan (Polonia), 7-9 de junio de 2006Burst preemption is the most effective technique to provide Quality of Service (QoS) differentiation in Optical Burst Switching (OBS) networks. Nonetheless, in conventional OBS architectures, when preemption happens the control packet corresponding to the preempted burst continues its travel to the destination node reserving resources at each node of the path. Therefore, an additional signaling procedure should be carried out to release these unnecessary reservations. In this paper we present novel control architecture to efficiently apply burst preemption without the need of the signaling procedure. Analytical and simulation results prove the effectiveness of this proposal.This work has been partially funded by the e-Photon/ONe project (IST FP6-001933) and the MEC (Spanish Ministry of Education) under contract TEC2005-08051-C03-01

An analysis of Regenerator Placement strategies for a Translucent OBS network architecture

Most research works in optical burst switching (OBS) networks do not take into account the impact of physical layer impairments (PLIs) either by considering fully transparent (i.e., using optical 3R regeneration) or opaque (i.e., electrical 3R regeneration) networks. However, both solutions are not feasible for different reasons. In this paper, we propose a novel translucent OBS (T-OBS) network architecture which aims at bridging the gap between the transparent and opaque solutions. In order to evaluate its performance, a formulation of the routing and regenerator placement and dimensioning problem (RRPD) is presented. Since such formulation results in a complex problem, we also propose several alternative heuristic strategies. In particular, we evaluate the trade-off between optimality and execution times provided by these methods. Finally, we conduct a series of simulation experiments that prove that the T-OBS network model proposed effectively deals with burst losses caused by the impact of PLIs and ensures that the overall network performance remains unaffected.Preprin

Non-linear optimization for multi-path source routing in OBS networks

Optical Burst Switching (OBS) architectures without buffering capabilities are sensitive to burst losses. A proper routing strategy may help to reduce such congestion. In this letter we present a novel approach for OBS multi-path source routing problem. Our solution is based on non-linear optimization with a straightforward calculation of partial derivatives. Simulation results demonstrate that optimized routing effectively reduces the overall burst loss probability with respect to shortest path and deflection routing.Postprint (published version

AnyTraffic routing algorithm for label-based forwarding

The high capacity provided by packet-switched networks is supporting the proliferation of bandwidth intensive multimedia applications which require multicasting capability. As a consequence on today’s networks, unicast and multicast traffic compete for shared resources where a router must maintain both unicast and multicast forwarding states. Pursuing a forwarding state reduction, in this paper we introduce the novel concept of AnyTraffic data group which consists of a group of nodes receiving both unicast and multicast traffic over the same single minimum-cost network entity. A novel heuristic algorithm is specifically defined to accommodate such data group and has been compared with the standard shortest path (SP) algorithm - the optimal case for unicast routing - and a classical Steiner tree (ST) heuristic algorithm - the optimal case for multicast routing. Exhaustive experiments have been performed to validate the proposed algorithm.Postprint (published version

Virtual topology design in OBS networks

The problem of burst losses in OBS networks has an impact on the service quality perceived by end users. In order to guarantee certain level of Service Quality (QoS) in terms of burst losses, wavelength resources have to be dimensioned properly. In this paper, we address the problem of the Virtual Topology (VT) design that concerns the establishment of explicit routing paths and the allocation of wavelengths in network links to support connections with QoS guarantees in the OBS network. We consider the GMPLS control plane as an overlying technology which facilitates the establishment of VT on top of physical network topology.Postprint (published version

A GMPLS/OBS network architecture enabling QoS-aware end-to-end burst transport

This paper introduces a Generalized Multi-Protocol Label Switching (GMPLS)-enabled Optical Burst Switched (OBS) network architecture featuring end-to-end QoS-aware burst transport services. This is achieved by setting up burst Label Switched Paths (LSPs) properly dimensioned to match specific burst drop probability requirements. These burst LSPs are used for specific guaranteed QoS levels, whereas the remaining network capacity can be left for best-effort burst support. Aiming to ensure the requested burst drop probability figures even under bursty traffic patterns, burst LSPs’ performance is continuously monitored. Therefore, GMPLS-driven capacity reconfigurations can be dynamically triggered whether unfavorable network conditions are detected. Through the paper, the GMPLS/OBS architecture is firstly detailed, followed by the presentation of the optimized methods used for the initial burst LSP dimensioning. The successful network performance is finally illustrated by simulations on several network scenarios.Preprin

A performance survey on deflection routing techniques for OBS networks

In this paper, we present a survey comparing different deflection routing based techniques applied to optical burst switching (OBS) networks. For such study we consider the E-OBS architecture proposed in [1] which is an advantageous solution for OBS networks since routing decision can be taken freely inside the network without constraints on the length of the path. Under this environment, several effective routing strategies proposed in the literature are applied, namely deflection routing, reflection routing, reflection-deflection routing and multitopology routing. The aim of this study is to analyse all these techniques considering both asynchronous and synchronous burst arrivals and compare their benefits. Moreover, we focus on a quasi-synchronous burst arrival case (with bursts not perfectly aligned) and analyse the trade-off between performance and alignment.Peer ReviewedPostprint (published version

Experimental study on the impact of regenerator placement strategies when dynamically provisioning in translucent GMPLS WSON networks

The impact of the regenerator placement strategies when dynamically provisioning connections in translucent WSON is studied. The evaluation is experimentally conducted in the ADRENALINE testbed in terms of the connection blocking.Postprint (published version