Cross-Layer Proactive Packet Protection Switching

Abstract

Abstract-To address exponentially-increasing traffic demands, cross-layer optimized architectures will be required to access the optical layer and allow for packet-level control of larger optical flows. In this work, we investigate cross-layer communications that use performance monitoring parameters in a proactive packet protection switching scheme to reroute data traffic. The optical signal quality is captured by bit error ratio measurements and made available to higher-layers, which then trigger flow rerouting based on the per-flow optical signal quality. We experimentally demonstrate crosslayer communications in a test-bed supporting 8 £ 10-Gb/s wavelength-striped optical packets. Furthermore, we compare cross-layer packet protection to a fast-reroute scheme in simulation, showing reduced packet loss rates and gains in throughput that are dependent on impairment dynamics and network size.

Proactive restoration of slow-failures in optical networks

“…Two are the accepted approaches on how to deal with failures: protection, which is effective but not efficient since it uses a lot of extra resources, and restoration, which is efficient but not timely, since several seconds can pass between the detection of a failed lightpath (LP) and the setup of a restoration path. Past works [1] [2] addressed the issue of effectively using protection resources to deal with LP slowfailures, i.e., those that are not abrupt, but start with a progressive increase of end-to-end pre-FEC Bit Error Rate (BER). These happen for both fiber and electronics impairments [3], and the transient of their BER from the normal operative value to the FEC threshold can have a duration that spans from tens of milliseconds to even tens of seconds [4].…”