Design of virtual private networks (VPNs) over optical wavelength-division-multiplexed (WDM) networks

Abstract

The bandwidth requirements of the Internet are increasing every day and there are newer and more bandwidth-thirsty applications emerging on the horizon. Wavelength division multiplexing (WDM) is the next step towards leveraging the capabilities of the optical fiber, especially for wide-area backbone networks. Virtual private networks are seen as the killer applications of tomorrow, and a great amount of research and development effort is being channeled into finding efficient ways for implementing them. In our work, we introduce the notion of VPNs operating over optical wavelength-routed WDM backbone networks. We formulate the problem of VPN design over optical WDM networks as an integer linear problem. A new method to deal with traffic from diverse VPNs is introduced and its performance analyzed.