Advance lightpath provisioning in interdomain optical networks

In interconnected optical networks, users submit lightpath requests at the time they wish to establish the lightpath. The service provider consults the information gathered by the interdomain routing protocols for available resources. For each request, the network must decide immediately whether to accept or reject the request. In this model, there is always the uncertainty of whether the user will be able to establish the desired lightpath at the desired time or not. Furthermore, in the context of a number of applications, e. g., grid applications, users need to set up lightpaths in advance to perform their activities that are planned in advance. We propose a new interdomain routing protocol called Advance Optical Routing Border Gateway Protocol (AORBGP) and a scheme that allows the setup of interdomain lightpaths in advance. AORBGP allows gathering information about interdomain paths and availability of wavelengths in the future. The proposed advance lightpath setup scheme makes use of AORBGP to get information about available resources (i. e., wavelengths) required to process lightpath setup requests. One of the key innovations of the scheme is that it provides the user with alternatives, carefully selected, when his or her request cannot be accommodated because of resource shortages. Indeed, the scheme provides the user with options to set up a lightpath later than the requested start time or with shorter duration than the requested duration. We performed a set of simulations to evaluate the benefits of the proposed scheme and the effect of a number of parameters on the performance of AORBGP. (c) 2005 Optical Society of America.