An Intelligent and Mobile Agent-based Approach for Dynamic Protection Set-up in Future Optical Networks

Abstract

The future Wavelength Division Multiplexing (WDM) based optical networks are expected to provide new Intelligent Wavelength Services (IWS) for the transport of all types of data (voice, multi-media, Web-based data, etc.) at bit rates exceeding I TBit/s. The survivability of such networks will depend on efficient protection mechanisms. Although several protection strategies will be proposed to the customers, managing the complexity of protection-related interactions between client layers and the optical network will become a considerable challenge. In this paper, we develop a number of statements related to the management of IWS and we propose an approach based on intelligent and mobile agents in order to tackle the management of protection-related client requirements. In that scope, we introduce the notion of p-groups as a possible client requirement and we define a Quality of Protection (QoP) as a new metric to assess the protection quality during the lifetime of client connections.