Priority-based optical network protection and restoration with application to DOD networks

Considering network outages resulting from terrorist activities and natural/man-made disasters, deploying traditional, pre-planned linear or ring protection schemes for ultra-high capacity optical links will not meet the global infrastructure grid-bandwidth expansion's (GIG-BE) strict survivability requirements. However, new optical-networking technologies and evolving control-plane standards like generalized multi-protocol label switching (GMPLS) provide the user with intelligent, near-real-time protection and dynamic network-restoration services. Based upon the users' pre-selection of up to eight traffic priorities, GMPLS protocols quickly detect single or multiple failures, and automatically calculate an optimal recovery route for optical or sub-optical end-to-end paths. Paths are protected with a protection scheme consistent with the users' traffic priority. If the network cannot provide 100% restoration, GMPLS based protocols give precedence to high-priority traffic to spare bandwidth and, if necessary, preempts traffic of lower priority.