Network planning and traffic engineering in ECOFRAME optical packet ring

ECOFRAME ring is a novel network technology for the metropolitan transport that exploits optical packet switching and optical transparency. Each station in this ring is equipped with a tunable transmitter and a number of fixed receivers, able to extract traffic from a predefined set of wavelengths. Receivers can be shared by different destinations, offering to this technology an ability to achieve significant CAPEX savings by using the optimum number of network resources, if properly dimensioned. In this paper we present a wide set of conclusions obtained when applying different network planning and traffic engineering tools in investigating an optimal design and evaluating performances of an ECOFRAME ring. More precisely, regarding network planning issues, we have estimated equipment costs, identified different network configurations and studied their impact on ring performances. Finally, we have found the potential savings when ring is properly designed. On the other hand, based on the previous results, we have identified the optimal ring configuration from price, capacity and scheduling point of view, suggested a cheap and fair scheduling policy for a general case and evaluated the positive impact of statistical multiplexing due to the WDM dimension, on the ring capacity. We have shown that an OPS ring properly dimensioned can achieve a solid QoS performance without slot reservation mechanisms.