Optimizing Router Bypass Granularity Based on Traffic Behaviour

Abstract

Routers consume tremendous amounts of power, which increases their carbon foot-print. Router bypass is an efficient and power-saving solution to manage the dramatically growing data traffic. Router bypass has been shown to provide significant savings in network costs, but these advantages are limited by a reduction in statistical multiplexing associated with the subdivision of available bandwidth typically into bypass and traditional portions. G.709 Optical Transport Network (OTN) technology with its introduced features such as direct support for packets (i.e., Generic Framing Procedure) and the Hitless Adjustment of ODUflex (HAO) have paved the way for a more dynamic and finer-granularity transport layer. In this paper, we explore the impact of the dynamic granularity of provisioned bypass bandwidth and provisioning time on the efficacy of router bypass techniques. Dynamic bypass performed much better especially when traffic was more volatile. An OMNET++ simulation shows that dynamic bypassing reduced off-provisioned bandwidth by up to 300% compared to the traditional bypass and enhanced the overall throughput by 5%.