A simple quality-of-service-based connection setup management approach for optical networks

Abstract

One of the major challenges for optical network operators is related to realizing profitable networks that preserve the overall satisfaction of their end customers. This necessitates ensuring a controlled network resource usage while decreasing connection blocking probability. However, optical networks are witnessing the introduction of an increasing number of new services, each having different requirements. As such, the evolution towards resource efficient connection setup management strategies that provide differentiated call-blocking probability becomes inevitable. Building on the previous observation, we propose in this paper a novel connection setup management strategy. This latter aims to differentiate the blocking probability among different classes of lightpath requests, while avoiding the starvation of the lower class lightpaths. The main idea behind our proposal is to privilige higher class lightpaths via preemption and to protect the lower class lightpaths through rerouting. In this manner, the proposed strategy serves the double objective of minimizing the overall connection blocking probability and of realizing quality of service (QoS) differentiation. The previous claim is asserted through our simulation results that gauge the main benefits behind our proposed connection setup strategy. The simulation results drawn from the National Science Foundation Network (NSFNET) and the European Optical Network (EON) show that the proposed strategy achieves both differentiated and low blocking probabilities.