Multilayer network analytics with SDN-based monitoring framework

Optical transport networks with an expanding variety and volume of network data services challenge network providers' ability to provide high-quality service assurance and network management. Software-defined networks (SDNs) decouple the data plane and control plane and enable network programmability in optical networks with a centralized network controller. The optical network then becomes more dynamic in network architecture and reconfigures frequently. Dynamic optical networks require all kinds of visibility into application data types, traffic flows, and end-to-end connections. Thus, we propose an SDN-based monitoring framework that expands network analytics to a converged packet and optical network. With a designated monitoring hub, monitoring information from multiple layers are collected and processed in a centralized server. Several monitoring technologies are provided as network services with the architecture-on-demand optical node architecture. The developed network applications on top of the SDN controller process all the collected monitoring information and enable multilayer network analytics based on the SDN-based monitoring framework. Several use cases demonstrated successfully that the developed multilayer network analytics provides powerful tools for network replanning and optimization. The multilayer network analytics enables quality of service recovery to avoid network disruption, optical power equalization at any combining device, and network debugging and restoration in optical networks.