CITE-PSO: Cross-ISP Traffic Engineering Enhanced by Particle Swarm Optimization in Blockchain Enabled SDONs

The immense potential of optical networks provides a highly favorable option for addressing rapidly increasing bandwidth needs. Elastic Optical Networks (EONs) exhibit considerable potential in enhancing availability, failure resilience, load balancing, and efficient resource allocations, rendering them a viable option for forthcoming high-speed networks. The integration of Software-Defined Networking (SDN) architecture with EONs, which separates the data and control planes, results in a dynamic and cooperative combination known as Software-Defined Optical Networking (SDON). However, the effective allocation of spectrum poses operational difficulties in this context. The proposed study introduces a framework called Cross-ISP (Internet Service Provider) Traffic Engineering enhanced by Particle Swarm Optimization (CITE-PSO) that is designed to facilitate Quality of Service (QoS)-focused cross-ISP spectrum assignment in SDONs through the integration of blockchain technology. The proposed framework aims to eliminate the need for centralized mediators while ensuring effective coordination of inter-ISP traffic based on QoS considerations. The research presents a novel application of blockchain technology that increases network efficiency and minimizes QoS signaling overhead during inter-ISP routing in SDONs. The proposed framework is evaluated under Hop-by-Hop Wavelength Switching (HWS) and Border-Node-Only Wavelength Switching (BWS) to assess its performance. The simulation results demonstrate that the CITE-PSO framework is proficient in managing the inter-ISP routing with QoS capabilities in the SDON architecture. This proficiency is measured by the various metrics across HWS and BWS scenarios.