Routing protocol enhancements for power state engineering of green network elements

A routing protocol is enhanced to advertise the power state of node interfaces for wavelength switched optical networks to allow tuning the power consumption according to the data traffic demands. By engineering the different power states, GMPLS controlled nodes are configured to preserve the QoS of incoming traffic volumes such as reliability as well as the constraints of carrier grade networks, such as stability and operation costs. For variable incoming traffic reference models, more than half of the total power consumption required for an European optical networks without any power saving capabilities can be saved from powering the optoelectronic interfaces column.