An IP-centric control plane for survivable WDM mesh networks: experimental results on the OMEGA test-bed

It is well known that IP over WDM is a promising and simplified network architecture for future high speed networking, in which the EP layer can be used as the control plane to manage the optical layer, in addition to providing user´s data transmission functionalities. Among others, key functions of the IP control plane are the provisioning of optical circuits for end-to-end data transmission between routers and fault management. An open question is what protocols are most suitable for providing such functions. The paper describes a suite of protocols that was implemented to accomplish both optical circuit provisioning and fault management in an EP over WDM network. The protocols were implemented and tested using the Ω (Optical Mesh network for Emerging Gigabit Applications) test-bed. Experimental results indicate good scalability properties of the implemented protocols. For example, it is possible to handle more than a hundred wavelengths with restoration times that are below few tens of milliseconds.