Interdomain traffic engineering in ASON/GMPLS controlled multilayer optical networks

Abstract

Optical control planes such as automatically switched optical networks or generalized multiprotocol label switching (GMPLS) have been viewed as one key enabling technology for future broadband communication networks for their capabilities of dynamic provisioning of flexible and effective services. To support end-to-end service delivery in optical networks, one of the most challenging issues for the optical control plane to address is how to design traffic engineering (TE) under a heterogeneous interdomain scenario. We propose a dynamic TE scheme for interdomain multilayer optical networks that supports setting up paths transparently for both intradomain and interdomain requests. The proposed scheme also disseminates through advertisement precomputed cost tables pertaining to traffic quality of service requirements, which can help optimize the utilization of both all-optical and optical-electrical-optical resources during the TE process throughout the network. We studied the TE scheme in networks with either instantaneous status update or with periodical status update. Our simulation results show that in both cases the proposed TE scheme outperforms existing TE solutions by setting up intradomain and interdomain paths integrally using the cost tables. Furthermore, we find that optimal network status update interval should vary with traffic load.