Connecting the clouds with low-latency, low-cost virtual private lines enabled by sliceable optical networks

Cloud computing is evolving as a major priority for many enterprises. Better wide-area networks with low latency and cost are needed to interconnect geographically-distributed data centers and offices using virtual private lines (VPLs). We propose novel network architectures based on sliceable optical networks to implement future VPLs. Optimal designs of the new network architectures and the traditional packet-over-optical network architecture are proposed and compared. It is found that the new architectures can achieve the `lowest-possible' latency with potentially lower cost than traditional architecture.