Restoration Services for the Optical Internet

In this paper we propose a new approach for optical layer restoration management in a dynamically reconfigurable optical network. The optical network consists of Optical Layer Cross-connects (OLXCs) which have the ability to convert the wavelength of any incoming channel to any outgoing wavelength (i.e. have wavelength conversion). Recently, there has been intense interest within the optical networking community and in standards bodies on bandwidth management in dynamically reconfigurable optical networks [e.g. 1,2,3,4]. In these networks, it is assumed that the physical hardware is deployed, but that network connectivity is not defined until high bandwidth connections referred to as lightpaths are established within the network. The lightpaths are provisioned by choosing a route through the network with sufficient available capacity. The lightpaths are established by allocating capacity on each link along the chosen route, and appropriately configuring the OLXCs. Restoration is provided by reserving capacity on routes that are physically diverse to the primary lightpath. In this paper we present a new approach to restoration for the future optical Internet, employing distributed restoration bandwidth management, failure detection and failure handling.