Traffic engineering in multigranularity heterogeneous optical WDM mesh networks through dynamic traffic grooming

• Published in: IEEE network Vol. 17; no. 2; pp. 8 - 15
• Main Authors: Keyao Zhu, Hongyue Zhu, Mukherjee, B.
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: New York IEEE 01-03-2003; The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, Inc. (IEEE)
• Subjects: Bandwidth; Bandwidths; Communication system traffic control; Communications networks; Computer networks; Finite element method; Mesh networks; Networks; Optical fiber networks; Provisioning; Spine; Switching theory; Telecommunication traffic; Tellurium; Traffic control; Traffic engineering; Traffic flow; Wavelength division multiplexing; WDM networks
• ISSN: 0890-8044; 1558-156X
• DOI: 10.1109/MNET.2003.1188281

In this article we investigate the problem of efficiently provisioning connections of different bandwidth granularities in a heterogeneous WDM mesh network through dynamic traffic grooming schemes under traffic engineering principles. Due to the huge amount of traffic a WDM backbone network can support and the large geographic area it can cover, constructing and upgrading such an optical WDM network can be costly. Hence, it is extremely important for network operators to apply traffic engineering strategies to cost-effectively support different bandwidth granularity services using only the appropriate amount of network resources. This requires an optical WDM network to have multigranularity switching capability, and such a network tends to be a multivendor heterogeneous network. However, WDM network heterogeneity increases the difficulty and challenge of efficient traffic provisioning. In this article we present different TE issues that need to be carefully considered in such an optical WDM network, and propose possible solutions and extensions for the generalized multiprotocol label switching optical network control plane. We extend an existing generic graph model to perform efficient traffic grooming and achieve different TE objectives through simple shortest path computation algorithms. We show that our approach is very practical and very suitable for traffic engineering in a heterogeneous multigranularity optical WDM mesh network.