Using the Network Load for Admission Control in OBS Networks: A Multilink Approach

In this article, we analyze the performance of the load-level-based admission control (LLAC) mechanism for optical burst-switched networks in a multilink scenario. The goal of our mechanism is to differentiate the blocking probability of a given service class according to the network load and a class-associated parameter, called load level. We develop a multilink analytical model based on the reduced load approximation method to analyze the proposed mechanism in more realistic scenarios. The multilink model provides an estimation error up to 13 times lower than the one provided by the single model for the analyzed configurations. Both are compared with simulation results. In addition, our results show that the load-level-based mechanism effectively differentiates the services in all analyzed configurations when compared with other similar mechanisms.