Toward a new route control model for multidomain optical networks

The design of the control plane model for multidomain optical networks poses complex challenges and introduces many open problems. Some initiatives have proposed optical BGP (OBGP), which is an extension of BGP supporting the advertisement and signaling of optical information between routing domains. We argue, however, that future optical networks offer the opportunity to avoid inheriting the limitations of BGP, especially in terms of routing and traffic engineering control. In this article we present a route control model replacing BGP/OBGP. Extensive simulations confirm that our route control model is able to drastically reduce the blocking experienced with OBGP, and this can be accomplished without increasing the number or frequency of routing updates exchanged between domains.