Self-healing techniques utilizing virtual path concept for ATM networks

Strong international effort has been made toward the realization of a B-ISDN based on ATM techniques. This paper proposes self-healing techniques for enhancing ATM network reliability. Self-healing is defined here as failed path restoration with distributed control mechanism by using cross-connects. First, the characteristics of virtual paths (VPs) are compared with those of digital paths in STM networks. It is clarified that VP benefits can be exploited for network restoration upon failure. Two high-speed self-healing algorithms that make the best use of VP characteristics are then proposed for restoring single-link failures. A technique for multiple-link failure restoration also is proposed. Finally, restoration performance is evaluated by computer simulation. It is confirmed that the proposed algorithm enables faster restoration than that possible using the existing algorithm for STM networks.