Confidentiality meets protection in elastic optical networks

This work considers the joint problem of securing confidential demands against eavesdropping attacks and protecting the network against link failures in elastic optical networks (EONs). Network coding is used to provide security for confidential connections by encrypting the data through XOR operations at the physical layer with other established connections in the network. Backup paths are also computed for protecting the primary path of the confidential connections, while ensuring that the level of security for the confidential demands is preserved in case of a link failure on the primary path or on any of the paths involved in the XOR process. A realistic network scenario is modeled, where four different classes of connections are considered with respect to their protection and security requirements, while a combination of novel integer linear programming (ILP) and heuristic algorithms are used to establish each class of demands in the network. The proposed algorithms are evaluated in terms of spectrum utilization, network blocking, and level of security provided. From the results obtained it is evident that confidential connections can be transmitted in a secure manner, while for the classes that require both security and protection, the connections retain their required level of security in the event of any single link failure in the network.