A RMSA algorithm resilient to multiple node failures on elastic optical networks

Abstract

An Elastic Optical Network (EON) provides a lot of flexibility on the way an optical network supports the demands of multiple services. This flexibility is given by the Routing, Modulation and Spectrum Assignment (RMSA) algorithm whose primary goal is to use the spectrum resources of the network in an efficient way. Recently, large-scale failures are becoming a concern and one source of such failures is malicious human activities. In terrorist attacks, although node shutdowns are harder to realize than link cuts, they are the most rewarding in the attackers’ perspective since the shutdown of one node also shuts down all its connected links. In order to obtain a RMSA algorithm resilient to multiple node failures, we propose the use of a path disaster availability metric which measures the probability of each path not being affected by a multiple node failure. We present computational results considering a mix of unicast and anycast services in 3 well-known topologies. We assess the trade-off between spectrum usage efficiency and resilience to multiple node failures of our proposal against other previous known algorithms. The results show that the RMSA decision is always better when the disaster path availability metric is used. Moreover, the best way to use the path disaster availability metric in the RMSA decision depends on the traffic load of the EON.