Shared mesh restoration: a simulation study

Summary form only given. The introduction of cross-connects (XCs) into optical networks grants us the opportunity to rapidly provision high bandwidth connections. These connections are generally used to carry critical customer data. As such, connection reliability becomes a major concern for both carriers and their customers. We investigated the scalability of XC architectures and shared-mesh restoration signaling schemes for rapid restoration. The key findings are that: 1. Sequential processing of cross-connect requests is highly undesirable for cross-connects with significant per-node cross-connect times; and 2. Contention resolution schemes with message forwarding only after cross-connection completion (such as those used within current generalized-multi protocol label switching (GMPLS) proposals) provides significantly slower restoration as compared with contention avoidance schemes.