A biological approach to physical topology design for plasticity in optical networks

We previously proposed a virtual network topology (VNT) control method that is adaptive to traffic changes. However, the performance of VNTs is fundamentally determined by the physical infrastructure, and the physical network therefore needs to be designed so that it is capable of utilizing the adaptiveness of the VNT control method. In this paper, we propose a design method for optical networks, e.g., wavelength division multiplexing (WDM) networks. This method is based on a biological evolution model and provides adaptability under various patterns of traffic fluctuation and traffic growth. Our method determines the set of nodes to which transceivers should be added in order to give plasticity to the designed network, where plasticity represents changeability of VNT against environmental variation. Evaluation results show that our method accommodates more patterns of traffic fluctuation with lower link utilization than ad-hoc design methods do.