Scalable and reconfigurable WDM network architecture

Abstract

Recently, there has been a growing interest in IP/ATM/SONET and IP over WDM (Internet Protocol (IP), Asynchronous Transfer Mode (ATM), Synchronous Optical Network (SONET) Wavelength Division Multiplexing) (WDM)) to meet the high bandwidth needs of Internet traffic. This paper presents a network architecture called hyper-cluster employing wavelength-routing, multi-hop packet switching and optical reconfiguration which can be used to support IP over WDM. The proposed architecture is modularly scalable to very large configurations on both hardware and operational bases. A hyper-cluster uses a logical hierarchy for the purpose of addressing but guarantees that all access nodes have a constant number of transceivers. It is a cluster of regular graphs; the clustering structure follows the traffic distribution in a grand granularity. The issue of operational scalability is addressed by presenting a scalable routing protocol When using shuffle-net as the building block, we also present a novel routing scheme called quantified deflection routing, which could improve network performance significantly. The application of the reconfigurability of the proposed architecture to IP over WDM is briefly discussed.