Network protection by single and failure-dependent backup paths - modelling and efficiency comparison

The paper deals with traffic recovery in IP/MPLS network carrying traffic of different priority classes. Two off-line network design problems are presented employing two different recovery mechanisms – single backup path and failure-dependent backup path protection. Also, two routing strategies are studied in this paper. A network design problem with failure-dependent path protection mechanism combined with the routing strategy implying both load balancing and path length minimization is proposed in this paper. The efficiency of the approach proposed is tested by combining optimization and simulation tools. Numerical experiments show that using the proposed protection mechanism allows more traffic to be accommodated in the network and decreases the number of disrupted LSPs in case of failure, as compared to other recovery options considered