Network protection, restoration and survivability

Network protection which not only provides the information when a breakdown in the network occurs but also offers the necessary protection to overcome the failure is an essential aspect of all network operations. In case of a link failure there should be efficient and immediate solutions to recover from such faults to enable the network to both sustain and maintain customer service. The breakdown of an optical network component such as a fiber splice can lead to the failure of all lightpaths that utilize that specific link. Hence network survivability becomes a critical issue in network design and real-time operation in order to provide protection and fast restoration against any failures. Although higher protocol layers have procedures to recover from link failures, the recovery time to minimize data losses is still uite long !i.e. in seconds" as compared with the e#pected restoration time in the optical layer !i.e. less than a few milliseconds". Higher layer protection and restoration mechanisms therefore need to be fast and efficient. Survivability is the ability of a network to withstand and recover from network failures.It determines the capability to provide continuous service in the presence of network failures. The basic function is to restore and provide protection in case of an optical network component failure. The restoration or provisioning process is re uired to discover a dynamic backup route whereas the network protection process ensures the availability of network resources to offer that backup route. $etwork protection can be either preconfigured or provided as re uired during the failure. In preconfigured !or preplanned" protection the spare resources are allocated in advance when a lightpath is re uired to be set up and therefore it provides for fast recovery in real time. $etwork protection mechanisms are driven by algorithms which maintain services carried by a specific network topology. These can be divided into two categories which are path- oriented protections link-oriented protections.

Path- oriented protections

In path protection the source and destination nodes of each connection statically reserve the backup paths and wavelengths during call setup. The working !or primary" and protecting !or backup" paths for a connection need to utilize separate optical fibers as shown in %igure. All the connections on a failed link are rerouted to the backup route. The source nodes of the failed link are informed about the failure via messages from the nodes ad&acent to the failed link !i.e. in this case, network node ' sends a link failure message to node (". The source immediately terminates the link with node ' and sets up a new path to establish a connection via the backup fiber between nodes ( and ) through nodes * and +. Link-oriented protections.

In link protection only the affected connections on the failed link are rerouted around that failed link. The source and destination nodes of the connections remain unaware of the link failure and the necessary rerouting. This situation is illustrated in %igure where a connection is set up dynamically using a protecting fiber employing network nodes * and + !i.e. interconnecting nodes ', *, + and ," in order to restore connection between nodes ( and ). -estoration or provisioning to provide network protection enables the network to restore and establish new connections replacing the faulty link by establishing a new path or the link. However, restoration offers increased fle#ibility over more rigid preconfigured protection. In preconfigured protection the resources are dedicated to establish a path or a link whereas restoration protection may re uire either shared or dedicated resources. Protection is referred to as ( . ( protection when a single protecting or backup fiber is made available for a single working or primary fiber. It is called (/( or (/$ protection when the single protecting fiber provides backup for one or a number $ of operational fibers .%urthermore, passive optical couplers0splitters and optical switches can be used to share or switch over the connection. $etwork protection using an optical switch and an optical splitter is illustrated in %igure

A single protecting fiber facilitates backup for a single operational fiber with an optical splitter at the source end and an optical switch at the destination end. This demonstrates ( . ( protection where a source is connected via an optical splitter dividing the incoming signal and coupling it to both the operational and protecting fibers. Thus the optical switch at the destination end can directly establish a link to access the protecting fiber. A scheme for (/( protection is depicted in %igure !b" where optical switches are used at both ends. To facilitate protection both optical switches must be used to switch over the connection. It is possible to e#tend the (/( to (/$ protection in which a single protecting fiber can provide protection for any single failed operational fibers. %or e#ample, (/$ protection with multiport optical switches A and 1 provides interconnection for the protecting fiber for any single broken link from $ fibers as illustrated in %igure !c". 2ach operational fiber is connected to optical switches at both the source and destination ends. %or normal operation both A and 1 switches remain in their 3%% positions and when an operational fiber fails they are turned 3$ for that specific fiber, enabling access to the protecting fiber and thus restoring the connection between the source and destination.

%urthermore, in order to reduce the switching time optical splitters can also be used in place of optical switches at the source and destination. In this case only optical switches A and 1 are re uired to provide access to the protection fiber but it should be noted that the splitter attenuates the optical signal power. 2ither ( . ( or (/$ protection can be used in 456 networks depending on the network survivability re uirements. In a 456 ring topology ( . ( protection is commonly employed for its simplicity

%igure shows two ( . ( protection schemes based on the ring topology for 456 networks with and without optical layer protection. 456 networks when using the optical layer enable all the networking resources !i.e. 73$2T and I8" to share the same wavelength, which in normal conditions carry specific traffic types on different wavelength signals, thus not allowing them to share the same lightpath. In both cases the ring network comprises a single operational fiber !i.e. outer ring" and a protecting fiber !i.e. inner ring" and four optical add0drop multiple#ers !3A56s" at points A, 1, 9 and 5 are also interconnected with two 73$2T line terminals and two I8 routers. 7uch protected rings are referred to as self-healing since they can provide automatic protection in the case of link failure and also they can divert the traffic using a safe alternative route without loss of data. Assuming a unidirectional ring structure for each fiber, the

operational fiber carries a clockwise transmission while the protecting fiber transmits in a counterclockwise direction. %or this reason it is also known as a bidirectional line-switched ring (BLSR The wavelength continuity constraint dictates that a particular lightpath can travel only if it maintains the same wavelength and direction !i.e. clockwise or counterclockwise" to avoid wavelength collision. Therefore two lightpaths A1 and 95 on the operational fiber both using wavelength :( can be set up as illustrated in %igure !a". These lightpaths are physically separate and hence they do not interact with each other. In the case of an A1 link failure, the protection fiber !i.e. inner ring" can use wavelength :( via I8 routers employing 3A56s at 9 and 5. In order to provide protection at the same time from 9 to 5 another wavelength !i.e. :'" will be re uired since :( is already in use on the protecting fiber providing an alternate route for lightpath A1 via 9 and 5. Therefore in this case the 73$2T line terminals A, 1 and I8 routers 9, 5 cannot share the same wavelength :( to provide ( . ( protection. 7uch ( . ( protection can be facilitated, however, using the optical layer protection where all the e uipment !i.e. 73$2T line terminals, I8 routers, multiple#ers and demultiple#ers, etc." can share the same protection as identified in %igure !b". It can be seen that only a single protecting ring employing a single wavelength :( facilitates protection simultaneously for both 73$2T line terminals and I8 routers. %or e#ample, in case of a failure between A and 5 !or 5 and 9" the protection can be made available using signal wavelength :(. It should be noted that using such optical layer protection employing a single wavelength provides only for a single failure protection as compared with a situation as identified in %igure !a" where more simultaneous failures could be provided with protection !i.e. in this case protection against two faults using two signal wavelengths". 3ptical layer protection offers, however, a capacity benefit when a large number of fiber pairs re uire protection. In contrast to conventional 73$2T or I8 layer protection, optical layer protection can employ optical switches and wavelength routing .This situa.ion is illustrated in %igure below which compares optical protection of the I8 layer with optical layer protection.

;sing the I8 layer all the protection is handled by the routers as shown in %igure !a". Two 456 links !i.e. 456 link ( and '" each providing multiple#ed ports for operation and protection are established using four optical multiple#ers0demultiple#ers. 1y comparison, when employing optical layer protection only a single protection fiber is used to share a common multiple#er as indicated in !b". This latter solution is possible since three operational fibers and a single protection fiber are further multiple#ed and the resultant 456 signal is divided using an optical splitter after the multiple#er providing ( . ( protection. The 456 signal is spilt between both the operational and protection fibers on the 456 link. Alternatively, an optical switch can be used to direct the incoming signal from the operational fiber to the protection fiber. In the case of the operational fiber link failure, the optical switch is turned on to restore connection via the protecting fiber as indicated in %igure !b". Thus optical layer protection uickly and effectively restores all the channels by simply using a single optical switch. It should be noted, however, that shared protection !i.e. (/$ protection" limits alternative routes as only one fiber is available to facilitate protection for $ operational fibers.