Access and metro network convergence for flexible end-to-end network design

This paper reports on the architectural, protocol, physical layer, and integrated testbed demonstrations carried out by the DISCUS FP7 consortium in the area of access - metro network convergence. Our architecture modeling results show the vast potential for cost and power savings that node consolidation can bring. The architecture, however, also recognizes the limits of long-reach transmission for low-latency 5G services and proposes ways to address such shortcomings in future projects. The testbed results, which have been conducted end-to-end, across access - metro and core, and have targeted all the layers of the network from the application down to the physical layer, show the practical feasibility of the concepts proposed in the project

Survivable mobile phone network architectures: Models and solution methods

... and describe a cutting plane algorithm for its solution. The model and the solution meth-ods are integrated in our network dimensioning tool, DISCNET. Given a communication demand between each pair of switching nodes in a region, the task is to determine the topology of a telecommunication network connecting the given nodes and to select, from a given set of valid values, a capacity for each potential physical link such that the com-munication demands are satisfied, even if a network component fails. A solution consists of the chosen links and their capacity, as well as the routings for each demand, in the case of failure-free operation and the case of single component (node or link) failure. We sug-gest two alternative models to deal with failures of single network components. The first employs diversified paths to guarantee the routing of a specified fraction of each demand without rerouting effort; the second allows rerouting in failure situations. At the end we discuss alternative ways to implement survivability using these two models. T he design, dimensioning, and administration of survivable telecommunications networks (i.e;, networks that survive the failure of certain components) are becoming more and more important. This is because overall service qual

Planning Fixed to Flexgrid Gradual Migration: Drivers and Open Issues

Flexgrid technology has recently been presented as the most promising option for upgrading the currently operating fixed grid optical networks and extending their capacity to be able to deal with the massive traffic volumes forecast for the next decade. Although the current traffic is successfully supported on fixed grid networks, flexgrid technology brings features that are not offered by the fixed grid networks, such as transporting optical connections with a capacity beyond 100 Gb/s and elasticity against time-varying traffic. In light of this, a gradual fixed grid to flexgrid migration is generally accepted in order to add these useful features to the network. In this article, we study the migration process where flexgrid is deployed in the network progressively, and review the main drivers and open issues induced by its deployment