Demonstration of dynamic traffic allocation in an SDN-enabled metropolitan optical network test-bed

Elastic optical networking (EON) is a viable solution to accomplish future capacity requirements of network operators. EON relies on reconfigurable optical add/drop multiplexers (ROADMs) capable of routing arbitrary channel bandwidths usually based on wavelength selective switches (WSSs). In this context, control-plane implementations (including signaling latency) and configuration times of WSSs are the two major contributors to delay the creation of label-switched paths (LSPs) in highly dynamic traffic scenarios. In this paper, we first show the optical data-plane implementation and operation in a metropolitan optical network. Then, we propose and experimentally demonstrate techniques to exploit the advantages of the centralized network's control logic intrinsic in SDN. Results prove the suitability of our proposals to enable fast LSP establishment in scenarios with high dynamic traffic.