Link-state update in wavelength-routed networks

Abstract

Link-state update is a critical component of the routing protocol in wavelength-routed networks (WRNs). High-frequency updates impose heavy traffic on network control channels as well as excessive burden of electronic processing, while stale link-state information seriously degrades network performance. In this thesis, we present the first in-depth study on the benefits of advertising wavelength availability. We introduce a general model of the important parameters affecting the performance and overhead of Link-State based Lightpath Establishment. The fundamentals of balancing performance and overhead are investigated and existing link-state update methods for WRNs, namely periodic update and triggered update, are evaluated. More importantly, this thesis proposes a novel link-state update method that successfully enforces the control bandwidth quota while achieving much lower blocking probability than existing link-state update methods.