Customer-managed end-to-end lightpath provisioning

Customer owned and managed optical networks bring new cost-saving benefits. Two types of such networks are becoming widely used: metro dark fiber networks and long-haul leased wavelength networks. Customers may invoke a special QoS mechanism where end-to-end lightpaths are dynamically established across multiple independently managed customer domains. The cost of bandwidth is substantially reduced since it largely becomes a capital cost rather than an ongoing service charge. Customers can optimize the overall resource consumption by utilizing resources from different suppliers. Remote peering and transit reduce the Internet connectivity cost. The bandwidth and quality of service are guaranteed because the customers directly peer with each other using transport networks. The technical challenges include distributed resource management, collaboration among independent customers without co-ordination through centralized management and dynamic partitioning of a provider’s resource to customers. An architecture for a customer-managed end-to-end lightpath provisioning system is presented. The distributed network resource management in a multi-domain environment is realized as service directories. Jini and JavaSpaces are used to develop the management system for customers to establish end-to-end lightpaths.