On the efficacy of WDM virtual topology design strategies

Existing WDM virtual topology models mainly aim at maximizing the network throughput by optimizing predetermined objective functions. While the literature is rich in variants of such objective functions, they share a few deficiencies. Specifically, they abstract the problem with one fixed objective assuming that the throughput hindrance is uniform across the network, and do not consider node structure nor router utilization. These factors, when considered, affect network bottlenecks limiting a network throughput. As a result, none of the existing models fits all ISP networks. In this paper, we introduce a novel algorithm to determine a network bottleneck based on the 1) physical topology, 2) traffic demand and 3) technology constraints, and a topology model leading to optimized network throughput.