Protecting core networks with dual-homing: A study on enhanced network availability, resource efficiency, and energy-savings

Core network survivability affects the reliability performance of telecommunication networks and remains one of the most important network design considerations. This paper critically examines the benefits arising from utilizing dual-homing in the optical access networks to provide resource-efficient protection against link and node failures in the optical core segment. Four novel, heuristic-based RWA algorithms that provide dedicated path protection in networks with dual-homing are proposed and studied. These algorithms protect against different failure scenarios (i.e. single link or node failures) and are implemented with different optimization objectives (i.e., minimization of wavelength usage and path length). Results obtained through simulations and comparison with baseline architectures indicate that exploiting dual-homed architecture in the access segment can bring significant improvements in terms of core network resource usage, connection availability, and power consumption.