New insights on survivability in multi-domain optical networks

With the development of intelligent optical networks and the general multi-protocol label switching (GMPLS) technique, the seamless convergence between IP network and optical network is no longer be a dream but a practical reality. Similar to the Internet, current optical networks have been divided into multiple domains each of which has its own network provider and management policy. Therefore, the development of multi-domain optical networks will be the trend of new-generation intelligent optical networks, and GMPLS-based survivability for multi-domain optical networks will become a hot topic of research in the future. This paper provides a comprehensive review of the existing survivable schemes in multi-domain optical networks and analyzes the shortcomings of current research. Based on previous studies, we present possible challenges and propose new ideas to design efficient survivable schemes to guide the future work of researchers in multi-domain optical networks.