Challenges for GMPLS lightpath provisioning in transparent optical networks: Wavelength constraints in routing and signaling

GMPLS has introduced several enhancements to the MPLS-TE routing and signaling control plane protocols to handle dynamic lightpath provisioning in wavelength-routed networks. Specifically, the GMPLS signaling protocol has been enhanced to support two new provisioning functionalities, namely, the minimization of the setup delay, and the setup of bidirectional connection requests. In both cases, the source node must perform a wavelength allocation for either minimizing the setup delay (i.e., the suggested label) or requesting a bidirectional connection (i.e., the upstream label). However, these GMPLS provisioning functionalities present important deficiencies when applied to wavelength-routed networks with the wavelength continuity constraint, degrading the network performance considerably. The reason is that the standard GMPLS routing protocols flood link attributes only at bandwidth granularity, that is, no per-wavelength channel granularity is disseminated. Therefore, the source node is unable to perform an optimal wavelength assignment that fulfils the wavelength continuity constraint along the complete route toward the destination. In this article we present and experimentally evaluate an enhanced routing-based solution in the ADRENALINE testbed to handle the wavelength continuity constraint.