Secure lightpath provisioning for all optical networks in the presence of security attacks at the Physical layer

This thesis deals with protecting all optical networks (AON) from security attacks at the physical level. It firstly presents an overall high level protocol for establishment, management and on-the-fly restoration of optimally secure lightpath by applying constraint-based open shortest path first (OSPF) source routing using security databases of components in the network. Secondly it presents analytical models of propagation of security attacks on optical amplifiers and optical switches. Thirdly it develops security envelopes around these components using these analytical models. Fourthly it shows ways of using these security envelopes to calculate security indices and on-the-fly real time restoration of these components in case of attack. This on-the-fly real time restoration prevents loss of data in case of an attack and removes the requirement of tearing down and reestablishing a lightpath in case of an attack. Fifthly it presents some simulation results for restoration of components under attack. Sixthly it presents a protocol for using fiber diversity between adjacent nodes on the calculated light path in the network to protect it against attacks on fibers links. The security envelope being external to the components is capable of protecting components like amplifiers and optical cross-connects (OXC) without requiring any internal modification or redesign of the original design of them. Thus the security envelopes can be applied to protect components of any vintage. The results of this thesis make it possible to avoid loss of significant amount of data in transmission and save time, effort and cost involved in tearing down and reestablishing lightpath in case of an attack. It is important to note that if the components at the physical level are security compromised then the operation of the whole network may be in jeopardy, as the signals coming from upper layers will not be transmitted properly.