Bidirectional lightpath provisioning in GMPLS-controlled optical networks

This paper compares two GMPLS schemes for bidirectional lightpath provisioning. The novel scheme based on the label set, where both directions are set up with a backward reservation, is assessed against the standard scheme based on the upstream label, where the reverse path is established with a forward reservation unaware of wavelength availability. Results show that the label set scheme significantly outperforms the upstream label scheme, especially when detailed network status information is not advertised.