Reliability based routing in WDM optical networks

Although recent advancements in WDM technology have significantly enhanced the performance and reliability of optical components and systems it remains inevitable that failures occur. Due to the massive increase of bandwidth supported by fiber networks it becomes extremely important to identify the impact individual failures may have on the network performance. This paper focuses on understanding the different parameters that affect the reliability of optical networks with emphasis on failures caused due to the optical components comprising the network infrastructure. As part of this study the reliability parameter associated with individual optical components is associated with the reliability of a link. Through extensive simulations it is shown that there is a direct impact on the traffic distribution across the network depending on the reliability characteristics of the network infrastructure. Several reliability-scenarios and their relevant results will be presented, discussed and compared. The different scenarios under study are based on a national USA network topology and include both protection and no protection routing.