Lazy flooding: a new technique for signaling in all optical network

Summary form only given. To cope with the optical data communication network (DCN) congestion problem, we propose a new technique: lazy flooding. It significantly reduces the number of flooded messages for the network resource and topology information update without affecting the lightpath construction and, consequently, path protection and restoration. The idea is simple: a channel status is flooded only when the number of available channels is from a selected set of values. Apparently, this method is "lazy", i.e., it does not flood for each channel update, and we call it lazy flooding. Different selected sets of channel numbers for flooding give different lazy flooding methods; a message is flooded whenever the number of the available channels on a link is: (1) Below a threshold (threshold flooding); (2) Following a geometric sequence (exponential flooding); and (3) Following a Fibonacci sequence (Fibonacci flooding). We shall show that these lazy flooding techniques significantly reduce the number of messages flooded throughout the DCN. On the other hand, lazy flooding might cause discrepancy in link load information and unnecessary link and network blocking. Mathematical analysis and simulation show that these effects from lazy flooding are negligible.