Self-Management of Hybrid Optical and Packet Switching Networks

Hybrid optical and packet switching networks are composed of multi-service hybrid devices that enable forwarding of data at multiple levels. Large IP flows at the IP level may be therefore moved to the optical level bypassing therefore the per hop routing decisions of the IP level. Such move could be beneficial since congested IP networks could be offloaded; leaving more resources for other smaller IP flows. At the same time, the flows switched at the optical level would experience better QoS thanks to larger bandwidth and negligible jitter. Moving these large flows to the optical level requires the creation of lightpaths to carry them. Currently, two approaches are used for that purpose: direct management and indirect management. With a direct approach, management messages are explicitly issued by the network manager to each managed device (e.g., multi-service hybrid devices). Whereas with an indirect approach, messages are issued by the manager to one managed device that is in charge of signaling the other ones. In both approaches, the decision of which IP flows will be moved to lightpaths is although taken by network managers. As a result, only IP flows explicitly selected by such managers will take advantage of being transferred over lightpaths. However, it may be that there are also other large IP flows, not known to the manager, that could potentially profit from being moved to the optical level. The objective aimed in this Ph.D. thesis is at investigating the use of self-management principles in hybrid optical and packet switching networks in order to identify which IP flows should be moved to the optical level as well as establish and release lightpaths for such flows.