A Hierarchical and a Non-Hierarchical European Multi-Domain Reference network: Routing and Protection

Routing, TE & Resilience are gaining on their importance in heterogeneous networks. For testing network design and configuration tools, as well as for simulating routing algorithms and protocols in a realistic multi-domain reference environment a common reference network is necessary to estimate and compare the known and novel methods. Until now there have been three to five well known single domain reference networks. The most widely used one is the NSFnet the North-American academic network. The other two often used reference networks are the European COST 239 and the LION/COST 266 fictive Pan-European reference networks. Two national networks are also often used the Italian and the German one. However, all these networks consist of a single domain only. To our knowledge there is no reference network so far capable of taking into account the multi-domain and multi-provider character of modern networks. The aim of this paper is to fill this gap. We propose a non-hierarchical reference network (el-net-nh) and a hierarchical one (el-net-h) and compare them from the point of view of blocking ratio and path length distribution for two cases, namely, with no protection at all and with dedicated protection