Implementing Protection Classes through p-Cycles in Impairment-Constrained Optical Networks

Resiliency is a crucial performance measure for high-speed all-optical networks. Previous work has shown that any algorithm designed for such purpose should take into account the physical layer characteristics of these environments, in other words it must employ a cross-layer design. In particular, cross-layer p-Cycle design has been developed as a desirable approach. In this paper, we propose a classification of network traffic resiliency requirements and present a multi-class link protection scheme. In particular we allow pre-computed but not pre-crossconnected protection routes for some portion of the network traffic. We evaluate the performance of these algorithms in the face of physical layer impairments (PLIs) and show that this classification of traffic can result in higher resiliency or, equivalently, lower vulnerability ratio in the network.