Comparative Study on Restoration Schemes of Survivable ATM Networks

In self-healing networks, end-to-end restoration schemes have been considered more advantageous than line restoration schemes because of a possible cost reduction of the total capacity to construct a fully restorable network. This paper clarifies the benefit of end-to-end restoration schemes quantitatively through a comparative analysis of the minimum link capacity installation cost. A jointly optimal capacity and flow assignment algorithm is developed for the self-healing ATM networks based on end-to-end and line restoration. Several networks with diverse topological characteristics as well as multiple projected traffic demand patterns are employed in the experiments to see the effect of various network parameters. The results indicate that the network topology has a significant impact on the required resource installation cost for each restoration scheme. Contrary to a wide belief in the economic advantage of the end-to-end restoration scheme, this study reveals that the attainable gain could be marginal for a well-connected and/or unbalanced network.