Real-Time Traffic Management in AT&T's SDN-Enabled Core IP/Optical Network

In late 2017, AT&T deployed an SDN controller that manages real-time traffic routing using a highly efficient optimization engine for its core IP network. The controller is being expanded to include optical transport layer, allowing network capacity to be dynamically adjusted in an integrated multi-layer manner. This results in a highly efficient network that dynamically adjusts to meet traffic growth, traffic shifts and network failures. This paper highlights some key learnings from the implementation and potential future work.