IEEE Journal on Selected Areas in Communications

The 15 papers in this special issue focus on traffic engineering for multi-layer networks. The papers can be roughly divided into the following three groups: 1) New Approaches to Traffic Engineering, 2) Multi-layer Survivability, and 3) Specific Issues. Some of the specific issues include optimal topology design, multicast flow aggregation, load balancing, traffic grooming, and Ethernet-based tech... View full abstract»

Dynamic sharing of the common physical network is envisioned as a key enabler for the emerging Internet technologies. This paper addresses challenges related to resource sharing in the physical layer and analyzes the performance of infrastructure service provision with control plane mechanisms based on generalized multi protocol label switching (GMPLS). In our approach, the provisioning of infrast... View full abstract»

Recently several investigations in the field of multilayer traffic engineering (TE) mainly focusing on random traffic demands have been carried out. In this paper, we propose different TE strategies for EXC/OXC networks including electrical traffic grooming and lightpath rerouting. Unlike existing investigations that consider only random demands for TE, we consider simultaneously scheduled and ran... View full abstract»

Generalized multi-protocol label switching (GMPLS) is a multipurpose control-plane paradigm that extends the MPLS scheme allowing switching without recognizing packet boundaries. In this paper, we present a novel extension that exploits a new physical layer for switching in optical GMPLS. The proposed extension is achieved through adding an optical code switching layer, or code switch capable (CSC... View full abstract»

Failure restoration at the IP layer in IP-over-WDM networks requires to map the IP topology on the WDM topology in such a way that a failure at the WDM layer leaves the IP topology connected. Such a mapping is called survivable. Finding a survivable mapping is known to be NP-complete, making it impossible in practice to assess the existence or absence of such a mapping for large networks, (i) we f... View full abstract»

We consider the realization of traffic-oblivious routing in IP-over-optical networks where routers are interconnected over a switched optical backbone. The traffic-oblivious routing we consider is a scheme where incoming traffic is first distributed in a preset manner to a set of intermediate nodes. The traffic is then routed from the intermediate nodes to the final destination. This splitting of ... View full abstract»

In this paper we study different options for the survivability implementation in MPLS over optical transport networks (OTN) in terms of network resource usage and configuration cost. We investigate two approaches to the survivability deployment: single layer and multilayer survivability and present various methods for spare capacity allocation (SCA) to reroute disrupted traffic. The comparative an... View full abstract»

We study an idea for efficient integrated protection of an IP over WDM network using the spare capacity of span-protecting p-cycles to provide protection against both optical link failures and router node failures in the IP/MPLS layer. Previously, networks using span-protecting p-cycles were designed from the point of view of a single-layer physical transport network. Also separately, it has been ... View full abstract»

In this paper we consider the problem of provisioning spare capacity in two-layer backbone networks using shared backup path protection. First, two spare capacity allocation (SCA) optimization problems are formulated as integer linear programming (ILP) models for the cases of protection at the top layer against failures at the bottom layer. The first model captures failure propagation using overla... View full abstract»

We present a new traffic engineering (TE) model which is based on QoS rerouting and uses hybrid resilience to improve the recovery performance of multi-layer networks where an MPLS network is layered above an MPlambdaS network. We formulate the rerouting of the LSPs/lambdaSPs as a multi-constrained problem and use its polynomial reduction to find a heuristic solution that can be implemented by sta... View full abstract»

Despite an observable trend in reducing the number of layers in core and metropolitan area networks, still the optimal design of multi-layer networks (like IP over WDM) remains an important issue as a means to reduce CAPEX and OPEX. In multi-layer networks, usually a connection oriented transport network (like WDM) is used to deploy a layout for optimal transport of traffic. In today's networks, t... View full abstract»

It is widely believed that IP over optical networks will be a major component of the next generation Internet However, it is not efficient to map a single multicast IP flow into one light-tree, since the bandwidth of an IP flow required is usually much less than that of a light-tree. In this paper, we study the problem of multicast flow aggregation (MFA) in the IP over optical two-layered networks... View full abstract»

The Internet has evolved into a multi-service infrastructure for the telecom and computer industries. Internet services are affected by congestions caused by the operations of Internet routing protocols. We propose a novel information service that guides the operations of Internet routing protocols to avoid such congestion. The information service maintains information about utilization of inter-d... View full abstract»

In this article, a new technique for grooming low-speed traffic demands into high-speed optical routes is proposed. This enhancement allows a transparent wavelength-routing switch (WRS) to aggregate traffic en route over existing optical routes without incurring expensive optical-electrical-optical (OEO) conversions. This implies that: a) an optical route may be considered as having more than one ... View full abstract»

There is an emerging wide interest to transition from legacy WAN transport technologies to Ethernet-based technology. The current round of carrier Ethernet standards will successfully equip service providers (SPs) with the required tools to provide carrier-grade scalability and to provision and engineer connection-oriented point-to-point (P2P) packet trunks across a native Ethernet infrastructure.... View full abstract»

Provides instructions and guidelines to prospective authors who wish to submit manuscripts. View full abstract»