Adaptive Virtual Network Topology Control Based on Attractor Selection

One approach to accommodating traffic on a wavelength-routed optical network is to construct a virtual network topology (VNT) by establishing a set of lightpaths between nodes. To accommodate fluctuating traffic on a VNT, we propose an adaptive VNT control method, which reconfigures VNTs according to traffic conditions on VNTs, in IP over wavelength-routed wavelength-division-multiplexing networks. To achieve adaptability in the VNT control method, we focus on attractor selection, which models behaviors where biological systems adapt to unknown changes in their surrounding environments and recover their conditions. The biological system driven by attractor selection adapts to environmental changes by selecting attractors at which the system condition is preferable. Our VNT control method uses deterministic and stochastic behaviors and controls these two appropriately by simple feedback of the conditions of an IP network. By utilizing stochastic behavior, our new approach adapts to various changes in traffic demand with selecting suitable attractors, which correspond to VNTs in our method, for the current traffic demand. Moreover, to define feedback of the conditions on the IP network, our proposed scheme only uses load information on links, which is easily and directly retrieved and thus achieves quick responses to changes in traffic demand. The simulation results indicate that our VNT control method based on attractor selection quickly and adaptively responds to various changes in traffic demand, and our method adapts to at most twice larger changes in traffic demand than existing heuristic approaches.