GMPLS-enabled dynamic translucent optical networks: An experimental study

A translucent optical network is a cost-efficient infrastructure between opaque networks and transparent optical networks, which aims at seeking a graceful balance between network cost and service provisioning performance. This paper addresses the dynamic provisioning of lightpath within a GMPLS-enabled translucent optical network. The GMPLS extensions are implemented, and dynamic lightpath establishment with explicit 3R regeneration control is experimentally demonstrated and evaluated. All the proposed methodologies are evaluated on a real network testbed with both control plane and data plane, which allows verifying their feasibility and effectiveness when being potentially deployed into real translucent optical networks.