Data-centric optical networks and their survivability

The explosive growth of data-traffic, for example due to the popularity of the Internet, poses important emerging network requirements on today’s telecommunication networks. This paper describes how core networks will evolve to Optical Transport Networks (OTNs), which are optimised for the transport of data-traffic, resulting in a IP-directly-over-OTN paradigm. Special attention is paid to the survivability of such data-centric optical networks. This becomes more and more crucial, since more and more traffic is multiplexed onto a single fiber (e.g, 160*10Gbps), implying that a single cable cut can affect incredible large traffic volumes. More in particular, this paper is tackling multi-layer survivability problems, since a data-centric optical network consists of at least an IP and optical layer. In practice, this means that the questions “in which layer or layers to provide survivability” and “if multiple layers are chosen for this purpose, then how to coordinate this functionality in these layers” have to be answered. In addition to a theoretical study, some case studies are presented in order to illustrate the relevance of the described issues and to help in strategic planning decisions. Two case studies are studying the problem from a capacity viewpoint. Another case study presents simulations from a timing/throughput performance viewpoint.