Toward efficient failure management for reliable transparent optical networks

Security and reliability issues are of utmost importance in transparent optical networks due to the extremely large fiber throughput. Fast and successful reaction and restoration mechanisms performed by failure management can prevent loss of large amounts of critical data, which can cause severe service disruption. In this article we discuss failure management issues in TONs, the mechanisms involved, and optical monitoring techniques. Furthermore, we propose applying structural properties of self-organizing systems to create a "small world" hybrid supervisory plane that can enable faster system-wide communication. We also investigate the possibility of a scale-free structure aimed at improving robustness in the network and propose various topology generation algorithms.