Title :
Optimal and Efficient Design of Ring Instances in Metro Ethernet Networks
Author :
Assi, Chadi ; Nurujjaman, Mohammad ; Sebbah, Samir ; Khalil, A.
Author_Institution :
Concordia Univ., Montreal, QC, Canada
Abstract :
Ethernet Ring Protection (ERP) switching has emerged to provide sub-50 ms of restoration times, allowing Ethernet technologies to expand beyond enterprises to next generation metro and backbone networks, providing much needed services to interconnect for instance dispersed and high-bandwidth data centers. This paper considers the problem of efficiently designing and planning an Ethernet-based metro network with ERP protection method. While previous recent work has addressed such design problem, none has considered the capabilities of exploiting multiple ERP instances, leaving behind some advantages that network providers could tap into to provide their customers with desirable quality of service support. Resource planning in ERP-based Ethernet network is, however, a complex problem due to the challenges associated with the logical link block selection as well as ring hierarchy selection. ERP instances add, however, another dimension of combinatorial complexity, making the design problem completely intractable. To address this issue, we resort to large scale optimization tools and present a novel primal-dual decomposition of the original problem using column generation. We show that our method is very scalable and obtain several design insights on various representative network instances.
Keywords :
LAN interconnection; combinational switching; communication complexity; computer centres; local area networks; next generation networks; optimisation; quality of service; switching networks; telecommunication network planning; ERP protection method; ERP switching; ERP-based Ethernet network; Ethernet ring protection; Ethernet-based metro network planning; backbone network; column generation; combinatorial complexity; data centers; logical link block selection; network interconnection; network provider; next generation metro network; optimization tools; primal dual decomposition; quality of service; resource planning; ring hierarchy selection; ring instance design; time 50 ms; Complexity theory; Ethernet networks; Network topology; Planning; Protection switching; SONET; Topology; Ethernet ring protection; VLAN assignment; network design; next generation metro networks;
Journal_Title :
Lightwave Technology, Journal of
DOI :
10.1109/JLT.2014.2358587