Experimenting OBGP for inter-domain optical switching

BGP is a standard inter-domain routing protocol for the Internet today. The development of WDM (or DWDM) technology and the growth of optical network bandwidth are very great. By combining BGP router with optical equipments in order to establish an end-to-end lightpath connection across multiple autonomous systems (ASes), we can improve bandwidth and reduce the cost of network deployment and operation. In this investigation, we study the optical border gateway protocol (OBGP), which is the extension of BGP to support optical networks. Since OBGP can give customers the management of lightpaths across carriers, they can setup or tear down lightpaths across AS optical domains. For verifying OBGP, we study and use tools to realize an OBGP system for inter-domain optical networks.