Performance of elastic and mixed-line-rate scenarios for a real IP over DWDM network with more than 1000 nodes [invited]

A real network with 1113 physical nodes and 1 + 1 protection is evaluated by varying the fraction of core/metro nodes to find the optimum network size regarding cost and power efficiency of elastic in comparison to mixed-line-rate (MLR) IP over dense wavelength-division multiplex networks. No significant benefit for any of the network concepts can be deduced, neither for a hierarchical/flat nor for a MLR/elastic network concept. On the other hand, the results confirmed that the use of the flex grid is beneficial for both MLR and elastic network scenarios.