Experimental Demonstration of Highly Resilient Wavelength-Switched Optical Networks With a Multivendor Interoperable GMPLS Control Plane

Abstract

The backbone infrastructure for providing carrier-class services, such as a wavelength-switched optical network (WSON), usually involves equipment from multiple vendors. For intelligent path control in the WSON, it is highly desirable to introduce a unified generalized multiprotocol label switching (GMPLS) control plane, which is beneficial for reducing the operational cost and facilitating the dynamic service recovery. However, the interoperability issue of GMPLS-enabled WSON among multiple vendors has not been investigated to date, preventing its wide deployment in an actual operational scenario. Accordingly, in this paper, we experimentally present a highly resilient WSON with a multivendor interoperable GMPLS control plane. We successfully verify the interworking of the GMPLS control plane and wavelength-switching equipment from multiple vendors, and experimentally present dynamic wavelength path control and dynamic lightpath recovery from single-link failures that occur at different times and multiple link failures that occur simultaneously on a multivendor WSON testbed with both control and data planes. To the best of our knowledge, the interoperability trial of GMPLS-controlled WSON is a world first.