Computer-aided tools for planning and designing WDM wavelength-routed optical networks

As network traffic continues to scale up due to the increasing number of internet users and their exponentially growing demand for bandwidth, network traffic is expected to become more dynamic in nature with connection requests arriving at higher rates with shorter holding time periods. One of the challenges facing WDM wavelength routed networks with dynamic traffic is designing control protocols that are able to set up and tear down connection requests (Lightpaths) dynamically and efficiently. In this thesis a computer aided tool for planning and designing WDM wavelength-routed optical networks under dynamic traffic was developed. The tool was used to analyze the performance of two different distributed reservation protocols for establishing lightpaths under dynamic traffic environment. The first is a reservation protocol based on source routing (SRP) and the second is a distributed reservation protocol based on destination routing (DRP). Both protocols assume that full knowledge of network status is maintained at each network node. SRP allows the source node to decide the route and reserve the necessary resources in the forward direction, whereas DRP allows the destination node to decide the route and reserve the necessary resources in the reverse direction. The performance of SRP and DRP is analyzed and compared in terms of the average blocking probability and the average setup time under different traffic loads and different network topologies. The thesis also proposes a new wavelength assignment scheme (the Improved First Fit (IFF)) that significantly reduces connection blockings, especially as the numbers of offered wavelengths are ever increasing.