Heuristic methods for backup lightpath routing in WDM networks

grantor: University of TorontoReliability is of prime importance in future WDM networks. The work presented here focuses on path protection in mesh-based WDM networks. Since backup lightpaths consume resources, an effort is made to reduce the resource burden imposed on the network. The idea of resource sharing for backup lightpaths is investigated to meet this end. Online, distributed schemes for path protection are discussed and compared from the standpoint of resource consumption. Two new backup routing schemes are introduced in this work. It is shown that these new backup routing algorithms ('Educated_DFS' and 'Unrestricted_TH') perform dramatically better than other conventional routing methods. This is proven through a series of simulations using networks of different topologies and a variety of network loadings. Two additional problems are investigated: (1) The effect of introducing multiple reliability service classes into the network; and (2) The issue of pre-allocating port mappings to backup lightpaths.M.A.Sc